News - Priceless Gems from the Louvre Heist Are at Risk of Permanent Disappearance

The invaluable jewels seized in a daring Louvre heist risk being dismantled and irretrievably lost, experts fear. After the swift seven-minute theft on Sunday, museum officials held an urgent meeting. The brazen raid saw an organized group flee with treasures, including an Imperial brooch adorned with 2,000 diamonds. The stolen collection comprises eight pieces, all from France's 19th-century royalty, each embedded with thousands of diamonds and other precious stones. Among the pilfered items were a tiara, necklace, and earrings from the Queen Marie-Amélie sapphire set. Also stolen was a brooch encrusted with 2,438 diamonds that belonged to Empress Eugénie, wife of Napoleon III. On the evening after the theft, the Louvre—the world's most-visited museum—remained closed. A critical meeting took place with Interior Minister Laurent Nunez and Culture Minister Rachida Dati to assess security failures. It emerged that security personnel did not intervene with the thieves, and law enforcement was slow to respond to the alarm. Justice Minister Gérald Darmanin also conceded that windows and display cabinets were too easily broken into, and there were not enough CCTV cameras in the Denon Wing. "We failed and presented a deplorable image of France," he said. Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau said the "highly organized gang" could well be working for a collector on the black market. The gang, consisting of several "highly organized criminals," arrived outside the world’s most-visited museum at around 9:30 a.m. local time on Sunday, while thousands of tourists enjoyed a day out. Masked and wielding angle grinders, the gang parked scooters outside the Apollo Gallery (Galerie d’Apollon), home to jewels belonging to Napoleon Bonaparte, his wife Josephine, and a string of subsequent emperors and empresses. They then extended a freight elevator—resembling a giant ladder—from the back of a flatbed truck and propped it against the wall of the gallery, which had been opened by King Louis XIV in the 17th century. The targeted wing of the Louvre, on the river Seine side of the museum, was undergoing construction when the gang struck. Employees had previously protested understaffing at the museum in June. After climbing to the top of the ladder, they used an angle grinder to pierce through the museum's external window, before entering the Salle 705 exhibition room. In a whirlwind seven-minute heist, they pried open two display cases and carried away nine pieces from the 23-item Napoleon and Josephine Bonaparte collection, Le Parisien reports. The treasures included the Eugénie Crown, adorned with thousands of diamonds and emeralds and worn by Napoleon III’s empress consort Eugénie, which was later found tossed below a Louvre window and broken into pieces. The historic Eugénie Crown, presented to the empress consort in 1855, was sold at auction in 1988 for $13.5 million (£10 million) before being donated to the Louvre four years later. It is now worth tens of millions of dollars, expert Josie Goodbody told the Daily Mail. The gang is also believed to have swiped a priceless necklace and brooch from Salle 705. By 9:40 a.m., they were out of the Louvre, disappearing into the Paris morning on their scooters just as police began to arrive.