Louvre Robbery: How Thieves Carried Out An Audacious Heist of ‘Priceless’ Napoleonic Jewels

It took only seven minutes for thieves in Paris to execute a brazen daylight heist at the famed Louvre museum on Sunday morning, coming away with jewels of “inestimable value” that had once belonged to Napoleon and his empresses.

The Louvre, which is the world’s most visited museum with 8.7 million visitors in 2024 alone, was closed for the day as police investigated how the robbers were able to carry out perhaps the most high-profile theft in modern French history. The closure was “a security measure and to preserve traces and clues for the investigation,” it said in a statement.

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The Parisian Public Prosecutor’s Office said it had opened an investigation into suspected “organised theft and criminal conspiracy to commit a crime”.

Read More: Pilfered Paintings: Five Famous Art Heists Through History

The robbery at a symbol of French culture has shocked the country and dominated the news on Sunday. It drew a quick response from government ministers, who arrived at the crime scene in the hours after.

Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez said the robbery was “a major, highly organized operation” carried out by a team that had done scouting. He told local French radio that the robbers utilized a disc cutter to slice through panes in order to access the jewels.

Nuñez and Culture Minister Rachida Dati both arrived at the Museum after the robbery to discuss investigations with Museum leadership and the police.

Videos at the scene by French media show tourists and museum-goers being ushered out of the museum shortly after its opening, as police cleared the area to begin their investigation.

Here is what we know about the robbery and how the thieves did it.

They used a construction site as cover

French daily newspaper Le Parisien reported that four thieves, masked and hooded, entered the Museum via the Seine-facing facade at around 9.30 am. Construction work aided their heist, as a cherry picker allowed them to access the Apollo Gallery jewel room directly on the first floor, which is less than 300 yards from the famed Mona Lisa.

Culture Minister Dati told French news outlet TF1 that surveillance footage of the theft showed the thieves entering “calmly” and smashing display cases containing the jewels. Dati said there was “no violence” during the heist, which she described as “very professional.”

Photographs from the scene show investigators focusing on a ladder against the south-east corner of the building, overlooking the River Seine. The ladder is mounted onto a mechanised lift and touches a balcony on the upper floor of the museum. Authorities have been unable to confirm whether the ladder was present for construction work or was placed by the thieves.

A tour guide told CNN that he heard what he described as “stomping” on the windows in the morning, shortly before being told by security to evacuate the museum.

“I was just trying to figure out what’s happening when I saw the museum staff going to that noise. Then they did a turn around, like real quick, and they started running and saying ‘get out, get out, get out, get out, evacuate!’” Ryan el Mandari told the outlet.

An escape on a scooter

Following the swift robbery, the thieves reportedly escaped on Yamaha ‘TMax’ scooters—which have a powerful 560cc engine—and headed in the direction of a nearby highway.

Investigators are now studying the escape route used by the robbers in their attempt to find them.

Staffing issues

Staffing has been a persistent issue at the Louvre in recent months, with staff strikes closing the museum for hours this summer after they raised concerns about overcrowding and mass tourism at the museum.

In 2023, the museum decided to limit visitors to just 30,000 a day—a third of their previous limit.

Although it is unclear whether staffing issues contributed to the theft, unions shared in June this year that staff were still under immense pressure, with too few eyes on too many entrances, exits, and visitors.

The jewels were priceless historic items

Exact details about what was taken are not yet known. But local reports suggest that nine items were taken from the Apollo Gallery, which houses what is left of the French crown jewels, most of which were stolen after the French Revolution.

The collection consists of pieces owned by the Emperor Napoleon, his nephew Napoleon III, and their wives, the empresses Marie-Louise and Eugenie.

Le Parisien reported that one jewel, the Crown of Empress Eugenie, was later found abandoned and damaged outside the Museum.

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

“Ideally, the perpetrators would realise the gravity of their crime and the dimension they’ve entered into, and return the items, since the jewels are completely unsellable,” Giquello told Reuters.

A history of heists

This was not the first high-profile heist at the famous museum. In fact, over a hundred years ago, in 1911, a former Louvre employee named Vincenzo Perugia stole the famous “Mona Lisa” in the hopes of returning it to its original home country of Italy. Painter Pablo Picasso and poet Guillaume Apollinaire were questioned by the police.

At the time, Da Vinci’s masterpiece was not the world-renowned painting it is today, but the theft helped it grow in fame, with people traveling the world to glimpse it. Twenty-eight months after the heist, Perugia attempted to sell the painting in Florence, which allowed him to be caught and for the Mona Lisa to be returned to the Louvre. 

In 1983, two pieces of 16th-century Italian armor were stolen from the Louvre in a mysterious heist that was solved in 2021 when the breastplate and ceremonial helmet, thought to have been made in the 16th century, were found in an auction in Bordeaux, France.

In 1976, three burglars climbed up the scaffolding on the side of the museum and smashed a window and glass casing, all to steal the diamond-studded sword used in the coronation of King Charles X in 1824. The case remains unsolved, and the artifact is still missing from the museum.

This is a developing story and will be updated.