Thieves carried out a brazen daytime heist at the Louvre Museum in Paris on Sunday morning, breaking into the famed landmark using a basket lift to force open a window, smash display cases and steal jewelry that has “inestimable value,” France’s interior minister and the museum said.
The break-in happened in broad daylight while tourists were already inside the Louvre, the world’s most visited museum. It was forced to close in the aftermath of the incident as authorities began to investigate. Police sealed the museum gates and visitors were ushered out. No injuries were reported, according to spokespeople for the Louvre.
“A robbery took place this morning at the opening of the Louvre Museum,” French Culture Minister Rachida Dati wrote on X, while the museum cited “exceptional reasons” for the closure.
Dati called the strike the work of “professionals,” describing it on TF1 TV network as “a four-minute operation carried out without violence.”
Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez previously told France Inter radio that the heist took seven minutes and the thieves used a disc cutter to slice through the panes. He said it was “manifestly a team that had done scouting.”
The heist occurred at around 9:30 a.m., when several people broke into the Louvre through the Galerie d’Apollon and stole jewelry before fleeing the scene on motorcycles, a museum spokesperson said in a statement to CBS News.
“An investigation has begun, and a detailed list of the stolen items is being compiled,” the statement said. “Beyond their market value, these items have inestimable heritage and historical value.”
France’s ministers of culture and interior were at the Louvre and working with the museum’s management as well as law enforcement, the statement continued, adding that “all possible measures are being taken to recover the stolen items.”
The interior ministry similarly said that forensic work was underway Sunday morning and a precise inventory of the stolen items was being compiled.
Video from the scene showed confused tourists being ushered out of the glass pyramid and surrounding courtyards as officers shut the iron gates and closed nearby streets along the Seine.
The Galerie d’Apollon is a vaulted hall in the Denon wing that displays part of the French Crown Jewels beneath a ceiling painted by King Louis XIV’s court artist, according to the ministry.
French daily Le Parisien reported the thieves entered via the Seine-facing facade, where construction is underway, and used a freight elevator to reach the gallery. After breaking windows, they reportedly took nine pieces from the jewelry collection of Napoleon and the Empress. One stolen jewel was later found outside the museum, the paper reported, adding that the item was believed to be Empress Eugénie’s crown and that it had been broken.
Security around the marquee works remains tight. The Mona Lisa is protected by bulletproof glass and a custom high-tech display system as part of broader anti-theft measures across the museum.
Staffing and protection have been flashpoints at the Louvre. The museum delayed opening during a June staff walkout over overcrowding and chronic understaffing. Unions have warned that mass tourism strains security and visitor management.
It wasn’t immediately clear whether staffing levels played any role in Sunday’s theft.
In January, President Emmanuel Macron announced a decade-long “Louvre New Renaissance” plan — roughly €700 million to modernize infrastructure, ease crowding and give the Leonardo da Vinci masterpiece its own dedicated gallery by 2031 — but workers say relief has been slow to reach the floor.
The theft, less than half an hour after doors opened, echoes other recent European museum raids.
In 2019, thieves smashed vitrines in Dresden’s Green Vault and carried off diamond-studded royal jewels worth hundreds of millions of euros. In 2017, burglars at Berlin’s Bode Museum stole a 100-kilogram (220-pound) solid-gold coin. In 2010, a lone intruder slipped into Paris’s Museum of Modern Art and escaped with five paintings, including a Picasso.
The Louvre has a long history of thefts and attempted robberies. The most famous came in 1911, when the Mona Lisa vanished from its frame, stolen by Vincenzo Peruggia, a former worker who hid inside the museum and walked out with the painting under his coat. It was recovered two years later in Florence — an episode that helped make Leonardo da Vinci’s portrait the world’s best-known artwork.
Home to more than 33,000 works spanning antiquities, sculpture and painting — from Mesopotamia, Egypt and the classical world to European masters — the Louvre’s star attractions include the Mona Lisa, the Venus de Milo and the Winged Victory of Samothrace. The museum can draw up to 30,000 visitors a day.
