A four man “strike team” broke into the Louvre in the heart of Paris on Sunday and robbed eight objects from the Gallerie d’Apollon, including historical jewellery, as the world-renowned museum closed for the day. French authorities later said they recovered one item, which was apparently dropped by the robbers as they made their escape.
Robbers wielding power tools broke into the Louvre on Sunday and made off with priceless jewels from the world-renowned museum, taking just seven minutes for the broad-daylight heist, sources and officials said.
“A robbery took place this morning at the opening of the Louvre Museum,” French Culture Minister Rachida Dati on Sunday wrote on X. The Louvre said it was closing for the day “for exceptional reasons”.
The thieves made off with eight priceless objects, with a ninth that they tried to steal recovered at the scene, Paris Prosecutor Laure Beccuau said.
The thieves did not target or steal the world-famous Regent diamond, which is housed in the same gallery the thieves hit, Beccuau said on BFM TV. Sotheby’s estimates the Regent is worth over $60 million.
French authorities are hunting the four man “strike team”, Paris’s chief prosecutor Laure Beccuau, told BFMTV television.
There were no injuries reported. Dati said she was at the museum and investigations were underway.
The robbery took around four minutes, Dati later told TF1, and it was carried out by professionals.
“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,” she said on TF1.
She said one piece of jewellery had been recovered outside the museum, apparently dropped as they made their escape.
French authorities confirmed they found the 19th-century crown that once belonging to Empress Eugenie, the wife of Napoleon III. The crown features golden eagles and is covered in 1,354 diamonds and 56 emeralds, according to the museum’s website.
French Interior Minister Laurent Nunez said the “major robbery” said the thieves used a crane that was positioned on a truck to enter the building. They stole jewels of “priceless value”.
It was “manifestly a team that had done scouting”, he said, adding that the panes were cut “with a disc cutter”.
The interior ministry specified the location as the Galerie d’Apollon.
Visitors evacuated
Police sealed off the museum and evacuated visitors. New arrivals were turned away and nearby streets were closed, according to the interior ministry.
A police source said the robbers had drawn up on a scooter armed with angle grinders and used the hoist — an extendible ladder used to move furniture — to reach the room they were targeting.
The brazen robbery happened just 800 metres from Paris police headquarters.
Louvre museum authorities could not immediately be reached for comment, according to French media reports.
But the Louvre confirmed that the museum was closed Sunday due to “exceptional reasons”, in a post on X.
According to French daily, Le Parisien, the criminals entered the sprawling building from the facade facing the Seine River, where construction work is underway.
After breaking the windows, they reportedly stole “nine pieces from the jewellery collection of Napoleon and the Empress”, said the report.
Echoes other recent break-ins
The theft, which occured less than half an hour after doors opened, echoes other recent museum raids.
Daylight robberies during public hours are rare. Pulling one off inside the Louvre — with visitors present — ranks among Europe’s most audacious since Dresden’s Green Vault museum in 2019, where which thieves smashed vitrines and carried off diamond-studded royal jewels worth hundreds of millions of euros.
Last month, criminals used an angle grinder to break into Paris’s Natural History Museum, making off with gold samples worth 600,000 euros ($700,000).
In November last year, four thieves stole snuffboxes and other precious artifacts from the Cognacq-Jay museum in Paris, breaking into a display case with axes and baseball bats.
French President Emmanuel Macron in January pledged the Louvre would be “redesigned, restored and enlarged” after its director voiced alarm about dire conditions inside.
He said at the time he hoped that the works could help increase the annual number of visitors to 12 million.
In 2017, burglars at Berlin’s Bode Museum stole a 100-kilogram (220-pound) solid-gold coin. In 2010, a lone intruder slipped into Paris’s Museum of Modern Art and escaped with five paintings, including a Picasso.
The robbery is likely to raise awkward questions about security at the museum, where officials had already sounded the alarm about lack of investment at a world-famous site that welcomed 8.7 million visitors in 2024.
The Louvre has a long history of thefts and attempted robberies. The most famous was in 1911, when the Mona Lisa vanished from its frame, stolen by Vincenzo Peruggia, a former worker who hid inside the museum and walked out with the painting under his coat. It was recovered two years later in Florence – an episode that helped make Leonardo da Vinci’s portrait the world’s best-known artwork.
Home to more than 33,000 works spanning antiquities, sculpture and painting – from Mesopotamia, Egypt and the classical world to European masters – the Louvre’s star attractions include the Mona Lisa, the Venus de Milo and the Winged Victory of Samothrace. The Galerie d’Apollon displays a selection of the French Crown Jewels.
The museum can draw up to 30,000 visitors a day.
(FRANCE 24 with AFP and AP)