Thieves steal priceless crown jewels from Louvre Museum in Paris
‘Daylight robbery’ is the understatement of the century after eight priceless pieces of royal jewellery were stolen from the Louvre in Paris in a brazen seven-minute heist. How did this happen?
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Jewel thieves have broken into the Louvre* in Paris and made away with France’s crown jewels*, leading the world’s most visited museum to close for the day.
France’s Interior Minister Laurent Nunez said that jewellery stolen from the Louvre Museum on Sunday in Paris was “priceless”.
The minister told French news outlets that “three or four” thieves had focused on two displays in the exhibition venue’s “Apollo’s Gallery”, completing their broad daylight robbery in just seven minutes.
France’s culture ministry said eight items of jewellery were stolen, including an emerald and diamond necklace that Napoleon* gave his wife Empress Marie Louise.
“Two high-security display cases were targeted, and eight objects of invaluable cultural heritage were stolen,” said the Ministry statement.
A ninth object — the diamond and emerald encrusted crown of the Empress Eugenie* — was found nearby, where it was dropped and damaged by the thieves as they fled, the statement added.
French authorities were hunting four members of the “strike team”, who wore masks to hide their faces and used motorised scooters to escape, prosecutor Laure Beccuau, told BFMTV.
She said the thieves used angle grinders* to cut into the glass display booths containing the jewels they were after.
The group had placed an extendable power ladder, commonly used to lift furniture into buildings, at the side of the Louvre and gained access through a window they broke, Ms Beccuau said.
The Louvre’s alarms were working at the time, but there “remains the question of whether the guards heard the alarm” and whether the alarm sounded in the gallery where the theft was taking place, she said.
The prosecutor* said their working theory was that the heist team was working under orders for a criminal organisation.
“Organised criminal gangs can have two aims: either to fulfil an order placed with them, or to acquire gems for money-laundering* ends,” she said.
France’s Culture Minister Rachida Dati reported the break-in earlier on Sunday local time.
“A robbery took place this morning at the opening of the Louvre Museum,” she wrote on X.
“No injuries reported. I’m on site with museum staff and police.”
Video later circulated online of a man in a black hoodie and hi-vis jacket sawing through a jewel display case.
The theft – just the latest to have targeted a French institution in recent months – saw the museum, the world’s most visited and filled with treasures including Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa painting, shut its doors for the day to the busy weekend crowds.
AFP saw a police forensics* team arrive and enter the museum, while armed uniformed soldiers patrolled the Louvre’s famed esplanade*, which was cleared of all visitors. Roads around the museum were closed off with police tape.
The brazen* robbery happened just 800m from Paris police headquarters.
The Paris prosecutor’s office said it had opened an investigation and the value of the looted jewels was still being estimated.
French President Emmanuel Macron promised that the thieves, who remain at large at the time of writing, would be caught and the items they stole recovered.
“Everything is being done, everywhere, to achieve this, under the leadership of the Paris prosecutor’s office,” he said in a statement on social media.
The seat of French kings until Louis XIV* abandoned it for the Chateau de Versailles* in the late 1600s, the Louvre is regularly listed as the world’s most visited museum.
The exhibition venue welcomed nine million visitors last year. Louis XIV commissioned Apollo’s Gallery himself. It later served as a model for the Hall of Mirrors* at Versailles.
Several French museums have been targeted recently.
Last month, thieves broke into Paris’s Natural History Museum, making off with gold samples worth 600,000 euros (AUD $1.1 million).
Those thieves also used angle grinders, plus a blow torch, to steal native gold, a metal alloy* containing gold and silver in their natural, unrefined form.
In November last year, four thieves stole snuffboxes* and other precious artefacts* from another Paris museum, also in broad daylight, breaking into a display case with axes and baseball bats.
They snuck into the Cognacq-Jay museum wearing gloves, hoods and helmets, striking in full view of other museum visitors.
President Macron in January pledged the Louvre would be “redesigned, restored and enlarged” after its director voiced serious concerns about conditions inside.
Mr Macron said he hoped that the works could help increase the annual number of visitors to 12 million.
– with AFP
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GLOSSARY
- Napoleon: Napoleon Bonaparte (1769–1821) was French Emperor from 1804 to 1815. He came to power as the result of a coup in 1799 and created a large empire
- Empress Eugenie: Empress of France from 1853 to 1871) as wife of Napoleon III
- prosecutor: legal representative who officially brings a legal case to court after someone has been accused of a crime
- money-laundering: the crime of moving money obtained illegally through banks and other businesses to make it look legal
- forensics: the work of scientists who examine evidence in order to help the police solve crimes
- esplanade: promenade, a wide, level path used as a prominent public walkway
- Louis XIV: a small child when he became king of France, he ruled from 1643 until his death in 1715 and was known as Louis the Great and the Sun King as his reign was regarded as a golden age of French literature and art
- Chateau de Versailles: the site of an elaborate royal residence built for Louis XIV and the seat of the French kings until the French Revolution (1682–1789)
- Hall of Mirrors: a grand gallery built to replace a terrace, it is 73m long, with 357 mirrors, and was used for ceremonies and the Treaty of Versailles
- alloy: a metal that is made by mixing two or more metals
- snuffboxes: small containers, often of elaborate ornamental design, for holding small quantities of snuff, which was a finely ground, powdered tobacco popular among the upper classes
- artefacts: ornaments, tools, or other objects made by human beings, especially those of historical or cultural interest
EXTRA READING
Why the famed Louvre shut down
Protesters hurl soup at Mona Lisa
Buried treasures creates gold fever
QUICK QUIZ
- How many pieces of jewellery were stolen in the Louvre heist?
- How did the thieves reach the higher level and access the gallery they were looking for?
- One item was recovered damaged at the scene – what was it?
- What was the Louvre used as prior to becoming a museum?
- What is the estimated value of the theft?
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CLASSROOM ACTIVITIES
1. Louvre security plan
Work with a partner to create a Louvre security plan poster of updated security measures to protect the precious jewellery and artworks in this famous museum.
What updated measures do you think they need to introduce to stop these brazen museum thieves?
Time: allow 20 minutes to complete this activity
Curriculum Links: English, Design and Technologies, Personal and Social, Critical and Creative Thinking
2. Extension
How might this story be told differently in a French newspaper compared to an Australian newspaper? What might be different about the reporting?
Time: allow 10 minutes to complete this activity
Curriculum Links: English, Geography, Personal and Social, Critical and Creative Thinking
VCOP ACTIVITY
Imaginative dialogue
Imagine you were there during the investigation at the Louvre Museum after the heist.
Create a conversation between two characters based on the range of authorities mentioned in the article – you may need or want to include yourself as one of the characters. Don’t forget to try to use facts and details from the article to help make your dialogue as realistic as possible.
Go through your writing and highlight any punctuation you have used in green. Make sure you carefully check the punctuation used for the dialogue and ensure you have opened and closed the speaking in the correct places.