This last Sunday, Oct. 19, the Louvre Museum in Paris, France, was robbed during open hours. The Louvre reopened on the morning of Wednesday October 22, after 3 days of police investigating the heist. The thieves broke in using power tools, targeting France’s crown jewels.
The Louvre is the world’s largest art museum. The Louvre has many famous art pieces, such as the Venus de Milo by Alexandros of Antioch and the Mona Lisa by Leonardo Da Vinci. Among many famous paintings, the Louvre also has many priceless sculptures, decorative arts, and historical artifacts.
Sunday, October 19, thieves took nine items, according to pbs.org, “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.” The ninth item was the Crown of Empress Eugénie, which was found but “badly damaged” after the thieves dropped it outside the crime scene. The eight stolen items together have an estimated total value of around $102 million and have not been recovered yet.
The thieves infiltrated the Louvre at roughly 9:30 am, just shortly after the museum opened at 9 am. The robbery itself took just less than eight minutes. The heist involved the robbers breaking into the second floor of the museum, in the Apollo Gallery, using a truck-mounted ladder to reach a balcony. The thieves wore orange and yellow high-visibility vests to disguise themselves as construction workers. The thieves then used power tools to cut the display case glass, and took their nine items, one of which was recovered but badly damaged, and fled the scene on motor scooters. The Louvre has much of the museum surveilled with security cameras, but not the entirety of the museum. “A report set to be published in the coming weeks by Cour des Comptes, the supreme auditing institution in France, found a significant delay in the “deployment of equipment intended to ensure protection” of the works within the Louvre from 2019 through 2024. The report, a portion of which was obtained by ABC News, found that some rooms at the Louvre are not completely protected by a video surveillance system, including the Sully Wing, which is only 40% covered by security cameras, and the Richelieu Wing, which is only 25% covered by cameras. The stolen Napoleon jewels were housed in the Gallery of Apollo, which is not located in either of those wings,” according to ABC News.
Although the heist this weekend was a great loss for the museum, the Louvre has a history of robberies, two of which were significant in the Louvre’s history. The first major robbery happened in 1911, when the Mona Lisa by Leonardo Da Vinci was stolen. It was stolen by Vincenzo Peruggia, a former Louvre worker. Vincenzo Peruggia was an Italian immigrant, and decided that he wanted to return the masterpiece to his home country of Italy. He had possession of the painting for two years before he was caught trying to sell the Mona Lisa to an art dealer. Wikipedia states, “After keeping the painting hidden in a trunk in his apartment for two years, Peruggia returned to Italy with it by train, after he saw adverts by antique dealers in an Italian newspaper. He kept it in his apartment in Florence for some time. Peruggia eventually grew impatient and was finally caught when he contacted Alfredo Geri, the owner of an art gallery in Florence, using the name Leonardo V.” It was returned to the museum in 1913. Another robbery happened in 1998, the painting, Le Chemin de Sèvres by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, was stolen from its frame in broad daylight. It was taken by an unknown thief, and it was never recovered. The stolen painting had an estimated value of 1.3 million at the time. This heist prompted the museum to upgrade its security to the level it is at today.
