A gang stole eight pieces of priceless jewellery from the Louvre in a seven-minute heist. Photo / Getty Images
It took less than seven minutes to pull off one of the world’s most spectacular heists.
A gang of brazen burglars targeted the world’s largest museum in the heart of Paris in broad daylight and fled with the crown jewels.
The Louvre had only been open to the public for 30 minutes on Sunday when the four thieves struck at around 9.30am.
Like every Sunday, the Louvre was busy. Hundreds of visitors had already filed into the museum on the first weekend of the All Saints Day holiday.
Meanwhile, on the side of the museum facing the Seine, two criminals rode their high-powered T-Max scooters on the Quai Francois Mitterand by the banks of the river.
Another two drove a truck-mounted lift behind the museum’s Denon wing.
On the first floor of the wing is the Apollo Gallery, home to some of the Louvre’s most precious collections.
The gallery, which was opened in 2020 after six years of renovation, boasts the crown jewels belonging to French monarchs and priceless treasures belonging to Napoleon’s family.
The truck drove up on to the pavement and positioned itself. The seven-minute countdown began.
The thieves set up the van’s mounted extendable ladder. Wearing yellow hi-vis jackets to appear like workmen, they scaled up to the first floor in full view of the street.
They used an angle grinder to force open a window and, now masked, entered the gallery.
At 9.34am, the gang entered the room where the dazzling jewels were kept. They were confronted by security guards but the professional thieves kept them back with their battery-powered angle grinders.
Le Monde has reported the Apollo Gallery is currently only monitored by five staff, instead of the usual six.
During the first break in the morning, which lasts 30 minutes, there are only four, which is when the thieves launched their audacious heist.
Alarms were triggered but the professional gang sawed through the display cases with the power tools and stole nine pieces of priceless jewellery. The theft was filmed by one witness.
Just one cabinet away, the Regent diamond, worth an estimated €70 million ($142m), lay untouched throughout the raid.
The thieves rushed back to the ladder and made their escape through the window. It was not yet 9.40am and they were already outside the museum with their haul.
Not everything had gone smoothly. As they fled the scene they dropped Empress Eugenie’s crown, which is set with 1354 diamonds and 56 emeralds.
The burglars tried to torch the lift but they were stopped by the intervention of another museum worker.
The gang escaped at speed on the two scooters before zooming away down the A6 motorway away from Paris.
Shell-shocked security guards were left to raise the alarm and call the police. The Louvre was evacuated, much to the bewilderment of the visitors who had no idea what had happened. One witness said it was a scene of “total panic”.
It would be several more hours before Paris, and the world, would learn exactly what had been taken.
Eight items of “priceless heritage value” were stolen, it was later confirmed. They included a sapphire necklace, earrings and a tiara belonging to Queen Marie-Amelie and Queen Hortense. The necklace is set with eight sapphires and 631 diamonds.
Also lost were an emerald necklace and earrings that Napoleon Bonaparte gave to his second wife Marie Louise as a wedding present and a 2000-diamond diadem belonging to Napoleon III’s wife Empress Eugenie.
The thieves also grabbed a large diamond corsage bow with 4000 stones which was bought from a private owner in the US for close to US$8m ($14m) in 2008, which also belonged to Empress Eugenie, and a reliquary brooch set with 94 diamonds.
It is feared that all the jewels could be lost forever. It would be impossible to sell the priceless items in their current condition.
But the gang could break them up, melt them down, and sell the diamonds and gold separately, robbing the world of a priceless piece of French history.
By 10.30am, France’s Minister of Culture Rachida Dati was at the museum, which announced it would stay closed for the rest of the day due to “exceptional circumstances”.
Dati confirmed on social media that there had been a robbery, that no one was injured and an investigation was in full swing.
Judicial police, who work under investigating magistrates in the French system, descended on the museum. About 60 investigators are working on the case, and CCTV is being scrutinised.
At 12.40pm, the Place du Carrousel between the Louvre and the Tuileries Garden was evacuated at police request to secure the perimeter.
At this point, the dropped crown was found, damaged.
At 2.30pm, Laurence des Cars, the director of the Louvre, addressed staff in the museum’s auditorium.
The speech did not go down well with some workers, who booed her. Angry staff said a plan to modernise museum security had recently been postponed and complained about a lack of resources.
On June 16, the Louvre was closed because staff had gone on strike over chronic understaffing, unmanageable crowds and security concerns. Later on Sunday, trade unions called for a completely transparent investigation and increased staffing.
There had been other warnings over delays to modernising security systems and a lack of surveillance cameras.
Just before 4pm a tow truck arrived to collect the lift used in the heist.
Laurent Nuñez, head of the interior ministry, told French radio he was “hopeful” the “seasoned” thieves would be caught soon. He suggested they could be “foreigners”, while Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau said it could not be ruled out that a foreign power may have commissioned the theft.
The Minister of Culture blamed organised crime, which was targeting works of art and museums. “These are professionals,” it said.
Standing in front of the Mona Lisa, Macron had promised €500m for a major renovation project of the Louvre in January.
Following the weekend’s heist, the French President vowed: “We will recover the artworks and those responsible will be brought to justice.”
The burglary brings back bad memories. It is the most dramatic since the theft of the Mona Lisa in 1911, which was found in Italy two years later.
The last time the Louvre fell victim to burglars was in 1998. A painting by Camille Corot was stolen in broad daylight and never recovered.
Five masterpieces were stolen from the Musee d’Art Moderne in 2010 by Vrejan Tomic, a French burglar known as the “Spiderman of Paris” for his acrobatic thefts. None have been recovered.
There was a surge in burglaries targeting French museums before this “theft of the decade”.
In September, six kilos of gold worth €600,000 was stolen from the National Museum of Natural History, and exhibits worth a total of €6.5m were taken from a museum in Limoges.
Mostly, such stolen objects are melted down and lost forever.
At the Louvre, which remained closed on Monday, they will be desperately hoping that France’s crown jewels will avoid that sad fate.
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