Louvre closed after thieves steal ‘priceless’ jewels in brazen daylight robbery

Visitors line up to enter the Louvre in Paris on Sept. 14, 2023. Thieves made off with jewelry of “incalculable” value in a brazen daylight robbery on Sunday at the Louvre Museum in Paris, according to France’s interior minister. (Andrea Mantovani/The New York Times)

By AURELIEN BREEDEN, CATHERINE PORTER and ALEX MARSHALL

Thieves made off with jewelry of “incalculable” value in a brazen daylight robbery on Sunday at the Louvre Museum in Paris, according to France’s interior minister.

The heist unfolded around 9:30 a.m. Laurent Nuñez, the interior minister, told France Inter radio that the thieves had used a lift mechanism on a truck — typically used to move furniture into Parisian apartments through the windows — to break into the Galerie d’Apollon, a second-floor wing of the museum.

The Apollon Gallery’s gilded hall holds the royal collection of gems and the crown diamonds, including “The Regent,” “The Sancy” and the “Hortensia.” The thieves broke into two display cases and snatched eight precious objects before fleeing on motor scooters with their loot — all within just seven minutes, according to Nuñez.

The jewels included a royal sapphire necklace and earring; a royal emerald necklace and earrings; and a diadem worn by Empress Eugénie, the wife of Napoleon III, who governed France from 1848 to 1870, according to a statement put out by the French Ministry of Culture.

“It’s a major robbery,” Nuñez said, adding that investigators believed that three or four thieves were involved and that the heist bore the hallmarks of an experienced team of veteran criminals given its precision and speed.

But in their haste to leave, the robbers dropped a crown worn by Empress Eugénie, which, according to the Louvre website, contains 212 pearls, 1,998 diamonds and 992 rose-cut diamonds.

According to the French Culture Ministry, five museum staff were in the Apollon Gallery when the burglars broke in, sounding the security alarms. They applied the museum’s security protocol: contacting the police and “prioritizing the protection of people.”

Visitors had been inside the building for 30 minutes by then. Some panicked at first, worrying the building was experiencing a terrorist attack or a fire, said Joseph Sanchez, a tourist from Puerto Rico who was in line with family members waiting to see Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa when security guards began to shout for people to exit the room. They were kept in the museum’s lobby for more than an hour before being calmly evacuated, Sanchez said in an interview.

The French culture minister, Rachida Dati, said no one was injured in the heist.

The museum closed for the day, as “a security measure and to preserve traces and clues for the investigation,” according to a statement from the Louvre.

Members of the police and army were on the scene. The authorities said investigators were poring through evidence that included objects abandoned by the thieves and security camera footage.

The Paris prosecutor’s office said it had opened an investigation and that “the extent of the losses is currently being assessed.”

A former royal palace, the Louvre is the largest museum in the world. Its dizzying number of wings and courtyards hold more than 33,000 works of art, including many sculptures, paintings and antiques. Up to 30,000 people visit the museum each day — with so many crowding around the Mona Lisa that President Emmanuel Macron of France announced this year that a dedicated room and entrance will be built to house just that painting.

French museums have recently been hit by a string of thefts. Last week, four men were arrested after the President Jacques Chirac Museum in the town of Corrèze was burgled by armed individuals wearing balaclavas. Less than 48 hours later, the museum was burglarized a second time, according to the French press.

In September, thieves stole nuggets of raw gold worth about $700,000 from the National Museum of Natural History, a few blocks from the Louvre. That same month, two porcelain dishes and a vase worth about 9.5 million euros, or $11 million, were stolen from the Adrien Dubouché museum in Limoges.

Arthur Brand, 56, a Dutch art crime expert, said in a telephone interview that he was unsurprised by the Louvre heist given the recent pattern. But entering France’s most important museum and stealing jewels, he said, “is the ultimate art heist, it’s like something out of a movie.”

There already have been a number of high-profile heists at the Louvre. During the summer of 1911, a museum employee stole the Mona Lisa. The employee, Vincenzo Peruggia, was arrested two years later while trying to sell the painting, and the Mona Lisa was returned to the museum.

In 1976, three burglars broke into the Louvre at dawn — climbing up a metal scaffolding and smashing windows on the second floor — and stole a 19th-century diamond-studded sword belonging to King Charles X of France. And in 1990, a painting by Pierre Auguste Renoir, “Portrait of a Seated Woman,” was cut from its frame and stolen from a third-floor gallery.

Museums in other countries across Europe also have been hit by thefts in recent years.

In 2019, thieves broke into the Royal Palace museum in Dresden, Germany, and stole more than 100 million euros’ worth of jewels (about $116 million). Most of the loot was later recovered as part of a plea deal.

Nuñez said Sunday that security at the Louvre had increased in recent years, and that it would be heightened further with the latest plans to overhaul the museum.

“But we can’t prevent everything,” he told France Inter.