PARIS — The heist cut through hushed corridors with a speed and ease that humiliated a nation. Authorities are now racing against their own clock.
In the space of just seven minutes in the casual daylight of Sunday morning, four suspects stole nine pieces of France’s crown jewels from the Louvre. They robbed not just the most visited museum in the world, but also the French people themselves, the government said Monday.
Officials are now scrambling to reassure the public about security at key cultural sites — and find the jewels stolen from the museum before they can be broken up and melted down.
The thieves used a monte-meubles — a truck mounted with a basket lift, commonly used to hoist furniture into Paris' inaccessible apartment blocks.
They parked it outside the sprawling renaissance palace, rode to the balcony outside the Galerie d’Apollon, and sliced through the window with cutting tools, according to officials.
Their daring heist pierced the nation’s self-image, too.
Threatening museum staff with their angle-grinders, the otherwise unarmed thieves then smashed through two display cases, taking necklaces, tiaras and brooches from France’s now dispatched royal families, officials said.
This all played out just after the museum had opened, with bystanders able to video one suspect in a high-visibility vest standing at one of the glass boxes housing historical treasures.
Investigators say they are puzzled why the culprits left behind the colossal, 140-carat Regent diamond, which has been valued at $60 million. Had they wandered down that opulent corridor, they would have reached the Mona Lisa — itself infamously stolen more than a century ago.
As it was, they made off on two scooters, but not before they dropped two items, including the Crown of Empress Eugénie, empress to Napoleon III in the 19th century, which was found broken near the scene, officials said.
That item alone is "worth several tens of millions of euros," Alexandre Giquello, president of France's leading Drouot auction house, told the Reuters news agency. "And it's not, in my opinion, the most important item" taken by the burglars.
Some experts have said that because the items are unique they cannot be sold, and so the thieves will likely try to melt down their metals and break up their emeralds, sapphires, diamonds and pearls. That means investigators might have less than a week before the jewels are lost forever.
The incident saw the Louvre shuttered Sunday and again Monday morning, with bewildered crowds evacuated from the area just after the assailants had struck.
For a nation whose character is defined by proud displays of history and culture, the incident is being seen in some quarters as a national humiliation.
French President Emmanuel Macron called it “an attack on a heritage that we cherish because it is our history.” He vowed to “recover the works and the perpetrators will be brought to justice,” adding that “everything is being done, everywhere, to achieve this.”
The Culture and Interior ministries held an emergency meeting Monday and agreed to ask senior officials across France “to immediately assess the existing security measures already in place around cultural institutions, and to strengthen them if necessary,” the Interior Ministry said, according to Reuters.
Justice Minister Gerard Darmanin said the heist gave a “negative” and “deplorable” image of France. “What is certain is that we failed,” he told the radio station France Inter. “The French people all feel like they’ve been robbed.”
One of Macron’s main political opponents, Jordan Bardella, the far-right leader who is favorite to replace him at the next presidential election in 2027, cast the crime as another example of “the disintegration of the state” under Macron, and “an unbearable humiliation for our country.”
It is not the first time the Louvre has been targeted by thieves.
In 1911, a museum decorator named Vincenzo Peruggia stole the Mona Lisa. And more recently French museums have been hit with a spate of thefts, including raw gold stolen from the National Museum of Natural History and porcelain works reportedly worth around $11 million taken from the Adrien Dubouche Museum in Limoges last month.
After the theft at the Louvre, the union SUD Culture blamed "destruction of jobs dedicated to security" and funding shortfalls for security equipment.
That hints at the wider disquiet percolating in France.
Macron has seen multiple governments collapse as he tries to staunch the rise of Bardella’s National Rally. Meanwhile hundreds of thousands of people have taken to the streets in protest at public spending cuts.
Now, authorities have another crisis at their door.
Paris Prosecutor Laure Beccuau said on BFM TV that if the heist was commissioned by a collector, then there is a chance of getting the items back in their original condition.
However, if not, the leading Dutch art detective Arthur Brand told Sky News that the police "have a week" before the jewels vanish forever.
"These crown jewels are so famous, you just cannot sell them," he said. "The only thing they can do is melt the silver and gold down, dismantle the diamonds, try to cut them. That's the way they will probably disappear forever."
"It's a race against time."
Molly Hunter and Mo Abbas reported from Paris and Alexander Smith from London.
