‘Four-minute’ daylight heist: Thieves steal priceless jewels from Louvre

Paris: In a minutes-long heist, thieves in balaclavas broke into Paris’ Louvre museum, used a truck-mounted electric ladder to smash an upstairs window, then stole priceless objects from an area that houses the French crown jewels before escaping.

The daylight heist happened about 30 minutes after opening on Sunday, Paris time, with visitors already inside. It is among the highest-profile museum thefts in living memory and follows internal complaints that crowding and thin staffing are straining security.

The four unarmed robbers – who wore masks and arrived at the iconic French attraction on motor scooters – used an angle grinder to break in through a window, which they reached from a basket lift or furniture elevator that was positioned on a small truck.

They then smashed two display cases in the gilded Galerie d’Apollon (Apollo Gallery) and pocketed the jewels before fleeing, French Interior Minister Laurent Nunez said. No one was hurt. Alarms brought Louvre agents to the room, forcing the intruders to bolt, but the theft was already done.

“We saw some footage: they don’t target people, they enter calmly in four minutes, smash display cases, take their loot, and leave. No violence, very professional,” French Culture Minister Rachida Dati said on TF1. The entire operation was over in six to seven minutes.

A total of nine objects were targeted by the criminals, and eight were actually stolen: a sapphire diadem, necklace and single earring from a matching set linked to 19th-century French queens Marie-Amélie and Hortense; an emerald necklace and earrings from the matching set of Empress Marie-Louise, Napoleon Bonaparte’s second wife; a reliquary brooch; Empress Eugénie’s diadem; and her large corsage-bow brooch – a prized 19th-century imperial ensemble.

“The theft committed at the Louvre is an attack on a heritage that we cherish because it is our history,” French President Emmanuel Macron said on X. “We will recover the works, and the perpetrators will be brought to justice.”

The thieves lost the ninth object – the emerald-set imperial crown of Napoleon III’s wife, Empress Eugenie, containing more than 1300 diamonds – during their escape, Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau said. It was reportedly found outside the museum with some damage.

“It’s worth several tens of millions of euros – just this crown. And it’s not, in my opinion, the most important item,” Drouot auction house President Alexandre Giquello said.

The theft unfolded just metres from the world-famous Regent diamond and 250 metres from Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa.

Beccuau said it was a mystery why the diamond, estimated to be worth more than $US60 million ($92 million) by Sotheby’s, was not targeted.

“I don’t have an explanation,” she said. “It’ll only be when they’re in custody and face investigators that we’ll know what type of order they had and why they didn’t target that window.”

One of the thieves was wearing a yellow reflective vest, Beccuau said, which investigators had since recovered. She added that the robbers tried and failed to set fire to the truck ladder as they fled.

The robbery is likely to raise questions about security at the museum, where officials had already sounded the alarm about a lack of investment at a world-famous site that welcomed 8.7 million visitors in 2024.

Probe under way

Nunez said a probe had been opened, with a specialised police unit that has a high success rate in cracking high-profile robberies tasked with running it.

Investigators were keeping all leads open, Beccuau said. But she said it was likely the robbery was either commissioned by a collector, in which case there was a chance of recovering the pieces in a good state, or undertaken by thieves interested only in the valuable jewels and precious metals. She said foreign interference was not among the main hypotheses.

“We’re looking at the hypothesis of organised crime,” she said, adding that it could be thieves working on spec for a buyer, or seeking to get access to jewels that can be useful to launder criminal proceeds.

“Nowadays, anything can be linked to drug trafficking, given the significant sums of money obtained from drug trafficking.”

The Louvre said on X it would remain closed for the day for “exceptional reasons”.

A video posted on X by a museum guide showed visitors filing towards exits in the middle of their tour, initially unaware of the reason for the disruption.

Joan and Jim Carpenter, from Santa Cruz, California, said they had been moved out of a gallery just as they were about to see the Mona Lisa.

“Well, when you rob the Louvre, that’s a big deal to all of France, so I knew something was up because of the way they swept the whole museum,” Joan Carpenter said.

The Mona Lisa was stolen from the museum in 1911 in one of the most daring art thefts in history, in a heist involving a former employee. He was eventually caught and the painting was returned to the museum two years later.

Questions on scrutiny

Officials at the Louvre this year requested urgent help from the French government to restore and renovate the museum’s ageing exhibition halls and better protect its countless works of art.

Macron, writing on X, said that a new government plan for the Louvre announced in January “provides for strengthened security”.

Dati said the issue of museum security was not new.

“For 40 years, there was little focus on securing these major museums, and two years ago, the president of the Louvre requested a security audit from the police prefect. Why? Because museums must adapt to new forms of crime,” she said. “Today, it’s organised crime – professionals.”

AP, Reuters, Bloomberg

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