If you're stuck in traffic for seven minutes, you may feel like time is dragging its feet as slow as it can, almost sticking its tongue out to mock your impatience. But, if you're scheming burglary at the Louvre, and all you have is seven minutes to carry out your plan, the clock begins to tick faster than you could imagine. Four masked thieves, on a sunny Sunday morning in Paris, managed to beat the pressure of this ticking clock. The sheer audacity of a daylight burglary has left much of the nation stunned and others, exuberant with eat-the-rich-esque glory. The museum lost $102 million worth of French history, albeit of questionable origin given the extractive tendencies of empire.
So, here's how it went down. The heist began on October 19, at 9:30 a.m., thirty minutes after Louvre opened its doors to tourists and art enthusiasts who throng the place with timed entry tickets. Four thieves, disguised as construction workers in high-visibility vests, arrived at the museum's Seine-facing side with a monte-meubles—a lift truck commonly used in Paris to hoist furniture into its uniquely narrow apartment buildings. The thieves placed orange traffic cones around their operation to add a hint of authenticity, passing off as authority-sanctioned execution. Whether these people were meticulous planners or just gamblers risking it all remains to be seen. But, you need sneering confidence to park a giant furniture lift outside the Louvre, raise it to one of the second-floor balconies, and have two in the team climb aboard with angle grinders in hand.
Once on the balcony outside the Apollo Gallery—not too far away from Mona Lisa—the thieves used the angle grinders to cut through a window, smashed two display cases, and took off with eight pieces of jewelry. The alarm did go off, but the thieves had left—even attempting to set fire to their lift—before the museum staff could reach the scene. On two high-powered Yamaha TMax scooters, the four thieves left for the A6 highway. In their rushed escape, they dropped the Crown of Empress Eugénie, which was found damaged outside the museum—a 19th-century masterpiece featuring 1,354 diamonds and 56 emeralds, now bearing the scars of a botched getaway. A 'terrible thing of beauty'.
What Exactly Are the French Crown Jewels?
The French Crown Jewels, in true fashion of any imperial artefact, are symbols of an entire nation's identity, craftsmanship, and history. The collection comprises crowns, orbs, sceptres, diadems, and jewels that served as symbols of royal and imperial power from 752 to 1870, worn by countless Kings and Queens of France as well as Emperor Napoleon himself. What makes these pieces particularly precious then isn't just the raw material value of their diamonds, emeralds, and sapphires, though that alone is staggering, but rather who owned them centuries ago.
Among the stolen items was an emerald necklace and earring set that Napoleon gifted to his second wife, Marie-Louise of Austria, in March 1810 as a wedding present, crafted by jeweler François-Régnault Nitot with 32 intricately cut emeralds and 1,138 diamonds. There's also a sapphire diadem that belonged to Queen Marie-Amélie and Queen Hortense—some historians believe it once belonged to Marie Antoinette herself, though no definitive proof exists and probably never will. The thieves also took Empress Eugénie's diamond bow brooch, which was purchased by jeweler Emile Schlesinger in 1887 for New York socialite Caroline Astor before the Louvre bought it back in 2008 for over $10 million, bringing it home to France after more than a century in private hands. The Crown Jewels have seen enough circulation in elite circles, an extension of their tangible connection to a time when France was an empire and Napoleon was marching forth. The collection became unalienable by decision of Francis I on June 15, 1530, meaning they were meant to remain with the French crown forever, never to be sold or dispersed.
The Louvre's Checkered History with Thefts
This isn't the Louvre's first—or most famous—rodeo with burglary. And if history teaches us anything, it's that even the world's most famous museum has been embarrassingly vulnerable over the decades.
The most famous—or infamous—of its thefts dates back to 1911 when Vincenzo Peruggia, a 29-year-old Italian glazier who briefly worked at the Louvre, walked into the museum wearing his old uniform, hid in a storage closet overnight, and the next morning removed the Mona Lisa right off the wall and took it home, wrapped in a white sheet. When he found the stairwell door locked, a Louvre plumber actually helped him open it, mistaking Peruggia for a colleague. The plumber did not know he was turning accomplice then. Nobody noticed that the painting was missing for twenty-eight whole hours. Paintings were usually removed on a frequent basis to be photographed, and they assumed Mona Lisa was out on a similar run. Peruggia's one-bedroom apartment could, for a span, boast of its museum-like pride. It was only when he tried to sell it to a gallery in Italy two years later that he was promptly arrested for his crime.
In 1990, Pierre Auguste Renoir's Portrait of a Seated Woman was cut from its frame and stolen from the third floor of Louvre, and at the same time, museum officials discovered that some small jewelry items had gone missing. It's still not clear if these were ever recovered. A few years later, in 1998, another painting, Camille Corot's Le chemin de Sèvres, was stolen and never found, presumably having made its way to the art black market.
What Happens Now
French President Emmanuel Macron has called the theft an attack on the country's cultural heritage and history. He's vowed to recover the stolen artefacts, but much remains to be spoken about the security lapse that allowed the theft in the first place. The SUD Culture union holds the museum's staff reductions responsible for the undermining of security. This was despite the museum seeing attendance scale up with more than 8 million people visiting the Louvre in 2024 alone. The workforce, as is, has been stretched beyond capacity.
Arthur Brand, a Dutch expert in art recovery, has claimed that the forces at most have a week before the Crown Jewels are lost forever. Since these cannot be sold whole, the jewels would be dismantled into smaller pieces, even individual gemstones, and the metal, melted to be repurposed. The craftsmanship will be lost just like that. These jewels were also not privately insured because French law prohibits entities like the Louvre from insuring their property except when pieces are loaned to other institutions, meaning the French government will not be reimbursed for any losses, and the only way to make this right is to actually recover the stolen items, which becomes less likely with each passing day.
The Prosecutor is quite wishful in thinking that the thieves may have a change of heart and decide to bring the jewels back. If they were determined enough to rob it in seven minutes flat, an undoing of their well-played gamble is the last thing the group would consider.
This heist might very well emerge as a symbol of France's failing hubris because it holds up the mirror to a country still reckoning with the relics of empire and the myths it tells itself about cultural supremacy.
