The Louvre Museum in Paris was robbed of jewelry

The Louvre Museum in Paris was robbed of jewelry

PARIS (AP) — The glittering sapphires, emeralds, and diamonds that once adorned France’s royals could well be gone forever, experts said Tuesday after a brazen, four-minute heist in broad daylight left the nation stunned and the government struggling to explain a new debacle at the Louvre.

Each stolen piece — an emerald necklace and earrings, two crowns, two brooches, a sapphire necklace and a single earring — represents the pinnacle of 19th century “haute joaillerie,” or fine jewelry. But for the royals, they were more than decoration. The pieces were political statements of France’s wealth, power and cultural import. And they are so significant that they were among the treasures saved from the government’s 1887 auction of most royal jewels.Laure Beccuau, the Paris prosecutor whose office is leading the investigation, said Tuesday that in monetary terms, the stolen jewelry is worth an estimated $102 million (88 million euros) but also noted that the estimate doesn’t include historical value. About 100 investigators are now involved in the police hunt for the suspects and the gems, she said.The theft of the crown jewels left the French government scrambling — again — to explain the latest embarrassment at the Louvre, which is plagued by overcrowding and outdated facilities. Activists in 2024 threw a can of soup at the Mona Lisa. And in June, the museum was brought to a halt by its own striking staff, who complained about mass tourism. President Emmanuel Macron has announced that the Mona Lisa, stolen by a former museum worker in 1911 and recovered two years later, will get its own room under a major renovation.

Now the sparkling jewels, artifacts of a French culture of long ago, are likely being secretly dismantled and sold off in a rush as individual pieces that may or may not be identifiable as part of the French crown jewels, experts said.“It’s extremely unlikely these jewels will ever be retrieved and seen again,” said Tobias Kormind, managing director of 77 Diamonds, a major European diamond jeweler, said in a statement. “If these gems are broken up and sold off, they will, in effect, vanish from history and be lost to the world forever.”Crown jewels are symbols of heritage and national pride

At once intimate and public, crown jewels are kept secured from the Tower of London to Tokyo’s Imperial Palace as visual symbols of national identities.

In the Louvre’s case, the gems were stolen from the former palace’s gilded Apollo Gallery, itself a work of art rendered in “sun, gold and diamonds,” per the museum’s website. Interior Minister Laurent Nunez said more than 60 police investigators are involved in the manhunt for the four robbery suspects. The thieves were divided into two pairs, with two people aboard a truck with a cherry picker they used to climb up to the gallery, Nunez said. Photos showed the equipment’s ladder reaching to the floor above street level.

Taken, officials said, were eight pieces, part of a collection whose origin as crown jewels date back to the 16th century when King Francis I decreed that they belonged to the state. The Paris prosecutor’s office, leading the investigation, said that two men with bright yellow jackets broke into the gallery at 9:34 a.m. — half an hour past opening time — and left the room at 9:38 a.m. before fleeing on two motorbikes.

The missing pieces include two crowns, or diadems. One, given by Emperor Napoleon III to the Empress Eugenie in 1853 to celebrate their wedding, holds more than 200 pearls and nearly 2,000 diamonds. The second is a starry sapphire-and-diamond headpiece — and also a necklace and single earring– worn by, among others, Queen Marie-Amelie, French authorities said.

Also stolen: a necklace of dozens of emeralds and more than 1,000 diamonds that was a wedding gift from Napoleon Bonaparte to his second wife, Marie-Louise of Austria, in 1810. The matching earrings also were stolen. The thieves also made off with a reliquary brooch and a large bodice bow worn by Empress Eugenie — both pieces diamond-encrusted, French officials said.

The robbers dropped or abandoned a hefty ninth piece, which was damaged: a crown adorned with gold eagles, 1,354 diamonds and 56 emeralds, worn by Empress Eugenie.Left untouched were other items in the crown jewel collection, which before the heist included 23 jewels, according to the Louvre. Remaining, for example, is the plum-sized Regent, a white diamond said to be the largest of its kind in Europe.Now it’s a race against time

Beyond the monetary value of the stolen jewels, the emotional loss is keenly felt and easier to measure. Many have described France’s failure to secure its most precious items as a wounding blow to national pride.

“These are family souvenirs that have been taken from the French,” conservative lawmaker Maxime Michelet said in Parliament on Tuesday, quizzing the government about security at the Louvre and other cultural sites.

“Empress Eugenie’s crown — stolen, then dropped and found broken in the gutter, has become the symbol of the decline of a nation that used to be so admired,” Michelet said. “It is shameful for our country, incapable of guaranteeing the security of the world’s largest museum.”

The theft Sunday was not the first Louvre heist in recent years. But it stood out for its forethought, speed and almost cinematic quality as one of the highest-profile museum thefts in living memory. In fact, it echoed the fictional theft from the Louvre of a royal crown by a “gentleman thief” in the French television show “Lupin” — which in turn is based on a 1905 series of stories.

The romance of such a theft is mostly a creation of showbiz, according to one theft investigator. Christopher A. Marinello, a lawyer with Art Recovery International, said he’s never seen a “theft-to-order” by some shadowy secret collector.

“These criminals are just looking to steal whatever they can,” Marinello said. “They chose this room because it was close to a window. They chose these jewels because they figured that they could break them apart, take out the settings, take out the diamonds and the sapphires and the emeralds” overseas to “a dodgy dealer that’s willing to recut them and no one would ever know what they did.”What happens now is a race against time both for the French authorities hunting the thieves and for the perpetrators themselves, who will have a hard time finding buyers for the pieces in all their royal glory.“Nobody will touch these objects. They are too famous. It’s too hot. If you get caught you will end up in prison,” said Dutch art sleuth Arthur Brand. “You cannot sell them, you cannot leave them to your children.”

Indiana couple Jacob and Holly Barker were eager to visit the Louvre on their recent trip to Paris. In an effort to avoid crowds, the Barkers had booked one of the first ticketed times of the day for Sunday, Oct. 19. Little did they know they'd be present for the shocking, audacious robbery that unfolded that morning in broad daylight.During a heist that lasted only seven minutes, four thieves stole nine priceless items from the Louvre's Galerie d'Apollon. The thieves, who entered the museum through window, escaped on motorbikes and remain at large.Speaking to TODAY, Jacob and Holly Barker describe what was going through their heads that morning — and when things turned "terrifying."After visiting the Mona Lisa, the couple meandered to the Galerie d’Apollon, the ornate, gilded room that was the inspiration for the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles, and the home of the French crown jewels.Jacob Barker said the gallery was a "priority" for him. He first heard about the room on "The Earful Tower" podcast, which described it as an "overlooked room" and a "miniature Versailles." (The Barkers ended up recounting their eyewitness account of the robbery on "The Earful Tower," in a full circle moment).Once in the gallery, the Barkers wandered off to admire different items. Then, they heard “banging" and something that “sounded like construction,” Jacob Barker recalled.

The banging was “alarming enough” — but the couple knew something was truly wrong when they heard a “high pitched, piercing sound” that seemed like it could be a “steel circular saw running against glass,” he said.“It was terrifying. I mean, it’s just like the movies. So we knew at that point we needed to take action,” Jacob Barker continued. "We didn’t know if there was one chainsaw-wielding robber behind that window, or if there were 100 mass terrorists, but we knew that we didn’t want to stick around to stick around to find out."Holly Barker said a museum employee then instructed the approximately 25 people in the room to "run." What came next was "controlled chaos," Jacob Barker said.

"It’s the Louvre, after all. I mean, if you walk too fast, they’ll instruct you to move slower,” he said.

When they made their way to another room, the couple wasn't sure how to proceed. Jacob Barker thought the situation would "blow over" and might just be a protest, so he was keen on staying where they were so they didn't miss out on the entire museum visit. Still, he was also a bit alarmed.

"In the back of my head, I’m thinking it also could be a mass shooting situation or a terrorist attack. But again, there was this controlled chaos where no one was giving us any instruction," he said.

Holly Barker, on the other hand, was eager to leave the museum entirely.“I wanted out. I’m a school teacher, and it felt like some sort of real active shooter situation without the gunshots,” she said.Packed into the lobby with hundreds of other tourists, the couple awaited further instruction from the museum staff."They were communicating to us that we were not in any danger. And in fact, they told us to go explore a whole other wing," Holly Barker said.Soon, the couple saw members of the National Police in the building. Outside of the building, the "police presence was insane," according to Holly Barker.The couple ended up leaving the museum around 11 a.m. and learned from other tourists that a robbery had caused all the chaos.

Now back in the U.S., the Barkers are still processing what happened.

“I mean, it’s crazy in my mind that we were there. We were in the room. The one saying I kept thinking, ‘Of all the gin joints in all the world,’ like we were in that room at that moment. What are the odds of that?” Holly Barker said.French authorities raced against the clock Tuesday, intensifying their hunt for the priceless royal jewels stolen from the Louvre, and the thieves whose brazen daylight robbery left the nation reeling.The thieves made off with nine items of jewelry belonging to members of France's erstwhile royal families. A crown studded with more than 1,300 diamonds was found damaged shortly after the theft on the escape route the four culprits took on a pair of scooters along the bank of the River Seine.That leaves eight royal jewels that police and investigators are searching for, though experts in art security told NBC News it could already be too late to recover them.“They stole items that can be easily taken apart, melted down, recut, and sold on the legitimate market with it being very difficult to trace them,” said Erin Thompson of John Jay College, the only full-time professor of art crime in the United States.

Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau said in an interview with RTL radio on Tuesday that the stolen items are worth an estimated 88 million euros, or approximately $102 million.More than 60 investigators have been drafted in to work on the case, French Interior Minister Laurent Nunez said in a television interview Monday night. The prosecutor’s office said it had security camera footage of the four thieves arriving outside the Louvre before their rapid robbery.According to a new timeline laid out by prosecutors, they spent just four minutes inside the world's most-visited gallery.

A vest and equipment left at the scene have been sent for analysis and investigators are examining a bottle of liquid, some of which was spilled in the truck used to position an extendable ladder against a wall of the museum, prosecutors said late Monday.Checks are also continuing on the functioning of the alarm systems.Art security expert Anthony Amore speculated that the thieves may be biding their time, but noted the police needed to act fast.“They are probably waiting to see what the museum’s response is going to be because they would probably want to know what all their options are in terms of monetizing what they’ve successfully stolen," Amore said.

"I think right now the pieces are probably intact, one hopes they are, and it’s up to the museum and the French authorities to act properly in this critical first couple of days,” Amore added.

The Louvre is always closed Tuesdays but was set to reopen Wednesday, a piece of good news for the thousands of foreign visitors who have the iconic attraction on their itineraries.

American Jacob Barker told NBC News he was in the Galerie D'Apollon when the thieves broke in. He said he heard a banging sound followed by the high-pitched, piercing sound of a saw.“We didn’t know if there was one chainsaw-wielding robber behind that window, or if there were 100 mass terrorists, but we knew that we didn’t want to stick around to find out,” Barker told NBC News.Several French newspapers have called the theft the “heist of the century,” leaving the already beleaguered French government with another major headache.French Justice Minister Gerald Darmanin told France Inter radio Monday that "we have failed" and that the heist gave a “negative” and “deplorable” image of France.“The French people all feel like they’ve been robbed,” Darmanin added.

The heist has fueled questions about the security of major cultural sites, after a spate of similar robberies.

And it has left many in the country reeling at a time when the national conversation was already dominated by social unrest and political gridlock.

Claudine Hemingway, who runs tours of Paris and the Louvre, compared her feelings to the 2019 fire at another Parisian landmark, the Notre Dame cathedral."I think in a way I’m still in shock. You cannot believe that this happened," Hemingway said.Authorities are intensifying their hunt for the thieves behind the brazen Louvre heist and the stolen French crown jewels once worn by Napoleon’s family.About 60 investigators are working to track down the four thieves and the historic pieces they stole in just seven minutes, France 24 reports.The glittering haul includes an emerald and diamond necklace and earrings set that Emperor Napoleon gave second wife, Marie-Louise of Austria, as a wedding gift in 1810.A specialized Paris-based police unit known as the BRB, which handles high-profile robberies, is also on the case, Reuters reports.

On Sunday, Oct. 19, the thieves stole nine pieces from display cases in the ornate Apollo Gallery on an upper floor of the storied museum, not far from where the iconic Mona Lisa hangs.

In their haste to get away, they accidentally dropped a diamond-and-emerald-encrusted crown that once belonged to Empress Eugénie, the third wife of Napoleon's nephew, Napoleon III.Art theft expert Anthony Amore says he believes the thieves carefully planned the spectacular heist.“The way that this one was perpetrated though makes me wonder if they had some inside information,” Amore, a bestselling author whose latest book, The Rembrandt Heist, debuts Nov. 4, tells PEOPLE.“To do it in the morning just after the museum opened means that they knew that that gallery was not packed with people in the world's busiest museum,” he says.“They went into the Apollo Gallery confident that they weren't going to be in a packed room, which tells me something.

“They may have been casing the place for a very long time, but one way or the other, they had a really good knowledge of how things operate.”If, as authorities believe, the thieves plan to melt down the pieces and sell the jewels separately, “that will make it difficult for a consumer to understand that they’re buying something hot,” he says.Selling each stone individually might be the easiest way for the thieves to sell the jewels, however, considering that law enforcement is on high alert. "It's easier to fence than a Rembrandt painting,” he says.The stunning crime, which French President Emmanuel Macron called an “attack” on the entire country, unfolded at 9:30 a.m., just after the museum opened.As tourists and art lovers began filing into the landmark building through the glass-enclosed Louvre Pyramid, four thieves in ski masks pulled up to the side of the building facing the Seine River in a small truck outfitted with a mechanized ladder.

On Sunday, four masked thieves stole eight pieces of jewelry from the Louvre valued at $102 million, sparking a national outcry and nationwide manhunt. The daring heist took just seven minutes, leaving investigators searching for answers as to how one of the world's most secure museums was robbed in such a brief window of time.

The Paris prosecutor said Tuesday that crown jewels stolen in a dramatic weekend Louvre heist were worth an estimated 88 million euros ($102 million), but that the monetary estimate doesn’t include their historical value to France.

Prosecutor Laure Beccuau, whose office is leading the investigation, said about 100 investigators are now involved in the police hunt for the suspects and gems after Sunday’s theft from the world’s most-visited museum.“The wrongdoers who took these gems won’t earn 88 million euros if they had the very bad idea of disassembling these jewels,″ she said in an interview with broadcaster RTL. ″We can perhaps hope that they’ll think about this and won’t destroy these jewels without rhyme or reason.″Also Tuesday, France’s culture minister said that the security apparatus installed at the Louvre worked properly during the theft.

Questions have arisen about the Louvre security — and whether security cameras might have failed — after thieves rode a basket lift up the Louvre’s facade, forced a window, smashed display cases and fled with priceless Napoleonic jewels on Sunday morning.

“The Louvre museum’s security apparatus did not fail, that is a fact,” the minister, Rachida Dati, told lawmakers in the National Assembly. ”The Louvre museum’s security apparatus worked.”Dati said she launched an administrative inquiry that comes in addition to a police investigation to ensure full transparency into what happened. She did not offer any details about how the thieves managed to carry out their heist given that the cameras were working.But she described it as a painful blow for the nation.The robbery was “a wound for all of us,” she said. ”Why? Because the Louvre is far more than the world’s largest museum. It’s a showcase for our French culture and our shared patrimony.”Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez said Monday that the museum’s alarm was triggered when the window of the Apollo Gallery was forced.Police officers arrived on site two or three minutes after they were called by an individual that witnessed the scene, he said on LCI television.

Nuñez did not disclose details about video surveillance cameras that may have filmed the thieves around and in the museum pending a police investigation. “There are cameras all around the Louvre,” he said.

Sunday’s theft focused on the gilded Apollo Gallery, where the Crown Diamonds are displayed. Alarms brought Louvre agents to the room, forcing the intruders to bolt, but the robbery was already over.

Eight objects were taken, according to officials: a sapphire diadem, necklace and single earring from a matching set linked to 19th-century French queens Marie-Amélie and Hortense; an emerald necklace and earrings from the matching set of Empress Marie-Louise, Napoleon Bonaparte’s second wife; a reliquary brooch; and Empress Eugénie’s diadem and her large corsage-bow brooch, a prized 19th-century imperial ensemble.

Posted on 2025/10/22 08:53 AM