On Sunday, October 19, a theft took place that will go down in history. Shortly after 9:30 a.m.—the opening time of the Louvre Museum, which, with around nine million visitors a year, is the most visited museum in the world—four professional thieves struck. Exploiting construction work inside the museum, they broke into the Galerie d’Apollon using a freight elevator positioned outside the building. In just four minutes they managed to force open the protected display cases and steal nine pieces of inestimable value. The jewels, part of the French Crown collection, were mostly from the late Napoleonic era. Among them were items that had belonged to Empress Eugénie, wife of Napoleon III, as well as a parure of diamond and emerald jewels given by Napoleon Bonaparte to his wife, Marie-Louise of Austria. The criminals then fled on two motorcycles and disappeared without a trace.
The operation was clearly long-prepared, “audacious,” and highly professional: the thieves exploited a weakness in the museum’s external security, despite the presence of advanced systems such as cameras and alarms. The theft took place in an area not open to the public at that time, but the speed of the action took staff by surprise. Museum security experts have stressed that this theft highlights persistent vulnerabilities despite technological advances. In the past, the Louvre has suffered other attacks: the 1911 theft of Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa remains legendary, but this is certainly one of the most ambitious in recent decades.
The museum has since closed its doors, while police immediately launched an investigation, including searches and the analysis of video recordings; Interpol is already working to monitor the black market for art. The risk, as in similar cases, is that the stolen jewels will not be recovered in time, since they could quickly be dismantled and sold off in pieces on the black market. A recent precedent is the theft at Dresden’s Grünes Gewölbe in 2019, when members of the Remmo clan stole dozens of 18th-century jewels. In 2022, after a carefully planned police operation, several clan members were arrested and part of the loot was recovered. However, some pieces remain missing, and the chances of finding them are slim. Here too, speed will be essential.
© cover image Benh LIEU SONG (Flickr)
