Thieves armed with power tools carried out a daring daylight raid at the Louvre Museum on Sunday, making off with eight pieces of priceless jewellery from the Galerie d’Apollon, home to the French crown jewels.
The heist occurred around 9.30am, shortly after the museum opened, authorities said.
Using a basket lift mounted on a truck, the intruders reached a second-floor window and cut through the glass with a disc cutter, before smashing display cases and fleeing on motorbikes, authorities said.
Interior minister Laurent Nunez described it as a “major robbery” involving “jewels that have genuine heritage value and are, in fact, priceless”.
The authorities have now released the full list of items that were taken during the heist, including a necklace, a brooch and a tiara from Napoleon’s imperial collection. A crown that belonged to Empress Eugenie, Napoleon III’s wife, was dropped by the thieves and later recovered nearby. However, the incident left it damaged.
The French culture ministry confirmed the stolen items were:
- A tiara, necklace and a single earring from a set that belonged to Queen Marie-Amelie and Queen Hortense
- An emerald necklace and a pair of emerald earrings from the Empress Marie Louise set
- A brooch known as the “reliquary brooch”
- A tiara belonging to Empress Eugenie
- A large corsage bow brooch of Empress Eugenie.
According to the museum’s website, the tiara from the set belonging to Queen Marie-Amelie and Queen Hortense is “composed of five articulated elements, each topped with a large sapphire. In total [there are] 24 sapphires, 10 of which [are] very small, and 1,083 diamonds”.
The Queen Marie-Amelie and Queen Hortense sapphire set belonged to King Louis-Philippe’s wife, while the Empress Marie Louise emerald set was a gift to Napoleon’s second wife.
The Empress Eugenie tiara, large corsage brooch, and “reliquary brooch” were part of Napoleon III’s wife’s collection, made in the 1850s.
The Eugenie brooch alone contains 2,438 diamonds.
Culture minister Rachida Dati said the robbery lasted less than four minutes. She said the footage of the operation revealed that the thieves “don’t target people, they enter calmly in four minutes, smash display cases, take their loot, and leave”.
“No violence, very professional,” she was quoted as saying by TF1.
The Louvre, which draws tens of thousands of visitors daily, was closed for the day for “exceptional reasons”.
Forensic teams are on site, and police are reviewing CCTV footage to identify the perpetrators. Witnesses reported scenes of chaos as police closed the museum’s gates and nearby roads.
Art detective Arthur Brand described the heist as “the theft of the decade”, warning that the jewels could be melted down or dismantled if not recovered quickly. He told Sky News that the “police will need to find the culprits in just one week”.
“These crown jewels are so famous, you just cannot sell them,” Mr Brand said. “The only thing they can do is melt the silver and gold down, dismantle the diamonds, try to cut them. That's the way they will probably disappear forever.”
He continued: “They [the police] have a week. If they catch the thieves, the stuff might still be there. If it takes longer, the loot is probably gone and dismantled. It’s a race against time.”
President Emmanuel Macron vowed swift justice and said France would “recover the works”. He added: “The theft committed at the Louvre is an attack on a heritage that we cherish because it is our history.”
Experts have described this as the most daring robbery at the Louvre since the 1911 disappearance of the Mona Lisa, which was recovered in Florence two years later.
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