Guests queue close to the glass Pyramid to enter contained in the Louvre Museum on a sunny spring day in Paris, France, April 18, 2025.
Abdul Saboor | Reuters
In a brazen, seven-minute strike, thieves used a basket raise to achieve the Louvre on Sunday morning and, as vacationers have been already inside, pressured a window, smashed show instances and fled with jewels of “inestimable worth,” France’s inside minister mentioned.
The world’s most visited museum closed for the day as police sealed gates and ushered guests out throughout the investigation.
“A theft befell this morning on the opening of the Louvre Museum,” Tradition Minister Rachida Dati wrote on X. The museum cited “distinctive causes” for the closure. No accidents have been reported.
Round 9:30 a.m. native time a number of intruders pressured open a window, stole jewels from vitrines and escaped on two-wheelers, in response to the Inside Ministry. It mentioned forensic work is underway and a exact stock of the stolen objects is being compiled, including that the objects have “inestimable” historic worth. Dati and Nuñez have been on web site with museum management.
Video from the scene confirmed confused vacationers being ushered out of the glass pyramid and surrounding courtyards as officers shut the iron gates and closed close by streets alongside the Seine.
Inside Minister Laurent Nuñez known as it a “main theft,” saying the intruders entered from the surface utilizing a basket raise. He mentioned on France Inter radio that the heist took seven minutes and the thieves used a disc cutter to slice by means of the panes. He mentioned it was “manifestly a crew that had completed scouting.”
The heist occurred within the Galerie d’Apollon, a vaulted corridor within the Denon wing that shows a part of the French Crown Jewels beneath a ceiling painted by King Louis XIV’s courtroom artist, in response to the ministry.
French day by day Le Parisien reported the thieves entered by way of the Seine-facing facade, the place development is underway, and used a freight elevator to achieve the gallery. After breaking home windows, they reportedly took 9 items from the jewellery assortment of Napoleon and the Empress. One stolen jewel was later discovered outdoors the museum, the paper reported, including that the merchandise was believed to be Empress Eugénie’s crown and that it had been damaged.
Safety and staffing on the Louvre within the highlight
Safety round marquee works stays tight. The Mona Lisa is protected by bulletproof glass and a customized high-tech show system as a part of broader anti-theft measures throughout the museum.
Staffing and safety have been flashpoints on the Louvre. The museum delayed opening throughout a June workers walkout over overcrowding and continual understaffing. Unions have warned that mass tourism strains safety and customer administration.
It wasn’t instantly clear whether or not staffing ranges performed any function in Sunday’s theft.
In January, President Emmanuel Macron introduced a decade-long “Louvre New Renaissance” plan — roughly €700 million to modernize infrastructure, ease crowding and provides the Leonardo da Vinci masterpiece its personal devoted gallery by 2031 — however staff say aid has been sluggish to achieve the ground.
Different European museums have been robbed
The theft, lower than half an hour after doorways opened, echoes different latest European museum raids.
In 2019, thieves smashed vitrines in Dresden’s Inexperienced Vault and carried off diamond-studded royal jewels price a whole bunch of thousands and thousands of euros. In 2017, burglars at Berlin’s Bode Museum stole a 100-kilogram (220-pound) solid-gold coin. In 2010, a lone intruder slipped into Paris’s Museum of Fashionable Artwork and escaped with 5 work, together with a Picasso.
The Louvre has an extended historical past of thefts and tried robberies. Essentially the most well-known got here in 1911, when the Mona Lisa vanished from its body, stolen by Vincenzo Peruggia, a former employee who hid contained in the museum and walked out with the portray underneath his coat. It was recovered two years later in Florence — an episode that helped make Leonardo da Vinci’s portrait the world’s best-known art work.
Residence to greater than 33,000 works spanning antiquities, sculpture and portray — from Mesopotamia, Egypt and the classical world to European masters — the Louvre’s star points of interest embody the Mona Lisa, the Venus de Milo and the Winged Victory of Samothrace. The museum can draw as much as 30,000 guests a day.
