OTTAWA, Ontario (AP) — A stolen portrait of Winston Churchill that was swapped for a fake during the pandemic has returned to its rightful place after two Ottawa police detectives traveled to Rome to retrieve it.

the police said “The Roaring Lion” was stolen from the Fairmont Chateau Laurier Hotel in Ottawa sometime between Christmas Day 2021 and January 6, 2022, and replaced with a fake. The change was only discovered months later, in August, when a hotel worker noticed that the frame was not hung properly and looked different from the others.

Genevieve Dumas, the hotel’s general manager, unveiled the portrait at a ceremony on Friday.

“I can tell you it’s armed, locked, secured,” Dumas said.

“It’s not moving,” she said, adding that staff accidentally set off the alarm on Thursday as they shut it down, “and I’m sure they heard it on Parliament Hill.”

The most famous depiction of Churchill, known as the ‘Roaring Lion’, appears on Britain’s five pound note and shows a beaming wartime prime minister staring into the camera.

Renowned photographer Yousuf Karsh took the iconic portrait in 1941 in the President’s office, just after Churchill gave a stirring wartime speech to Canadian MPs.

Towards the end of his life, Karsh signed and donated the portrait to the hotel where he had lived and worked.

The portrait had been sold through a London auction house to a private buyer, and neither the seller nor the buyer knew it had been stolen, police said.

Police have now charged a Powassan, Ontario man with forgery, theft and trafficking. This case is before the courts.

The return of the portrait was a highly anticipated event, with a ceremony held to a packed hall, including the mayor of Ottawa.

Nicola Cassinelli, a Genoa lawyer who bought the stolen artwork, sent a message.

“Yousuf Karsh’s magnificent photograph captures the pride, fury and power of the free world in the eyes of Sir Winston Churchill. And it represents, better than any other, the desire for good to triumph over evil.”

And despite the “extraordinary privilege” of having the portrait hanging in his home, “The Praying Lion,” he said, belongs to the public.