Thieves steal French crown jewels from Louvre in daytime raid

Thieves with power tools stormed the Louvre in broad daylight Sunday and took just seven minutes to seize some of France's priceless crown jewels, but they dropped a gem-encrusted crown as they fled, officials and sources said.

Authorities recovered the damaged 19th-century crown near the museum.

The spectacular heist, one of several targeting French museums in recent months, forced the closure of the Louvre, the most visited museum in the world and home to the Mona Lisa.

Police are looking for a team of four thieves, Paris chief prosecutor Laure Beccuau told BFMTV channel.

Soldiers patrolled the famous glass pyramid entrance, while evacuated visitors, tourists and passers-by were kept at a distance behind police tape.

It was “like a Hollywood movie,” an American tourist, Talia Ocampo, told AFP.

It was “crazy” and “something we won't forget: we couldn't go to the Louvre because there was a robbery,” he said.

A statement from the Ministry of Culture said eight pieces of jewelry had been stolen from the Apollon Gallery which houses the French crown jewels.

“Two high-security display cases were attacked and eight objects of cultural heritage of incalculable value were stolen,” the ministry statement said.

They included the emerald and diamond necklace that Napoleon gave to his wife, Empress Marie Louise, and the diadem of Empress Eugenie, wife of Napoleon III.

Beccuau said the thieves threatened museum guards with the angle grinders they used to break into the jewelry boxes. He said a team of 60 investigators was assigned to the crime.

The thieves used an extendable escalator of the type used to lift furniture into buildings to enter a gilded gallery housing the crown jewels, sources and officials said.

Empress Eugenie's 19th-century crown was found broken near the museum, according to a source after the theft, who asked to remain anonymous because she was not authorized to speak to the media.

The crown, with royal eagles, is covered with 1,354 diamonds and 56 emeralds, according to the museum's website.

Interior Minister Laurent Núñez said thieves had used the furniture lift to steal “priceless” items from two exhibits in the museum's “Galerie d'Apollon” (“Apollo Gallery”).

The stolen items also included a sapphire necklace belonging to Queen Maria Amelie and Queen Hortense and a pair of emerald earrings that belonged to Maria Luisa, according to the Culture Ministry statement.

The thieves arrived between 9:30 and 9:40 a.m. (07:30 and 07:40 GMT), according to the source following the case, shortly after the museum opened to the public at 9:00 a.m.

Another police source said the thieves had approached on a scooter armed with angle grinders and used the elevator to enter the Louvre.

A witness named Samir, who was riding a bicycle nearby at the time, told TF1 that he saw two men “get on the elevator, break the window and get in… it took 30 seconds.”

He said he saw four of them later leave on scooters and called the police.

The brazen robbery occurred just 800 meters (half a mile) from Paris police headquarters.

The Louvre management told AFP that it had closed because it wanted to “preserve traces and clues for the investigation.”

The director of the Drouot auction house told broadcaster LCI that he feared the jewels would be divided into gems and precious metals for sale, as they would be “completely unsaleable in their current state.”

The Louvre used to be the seat of French kings until Louis XIV abandoned it for Versailles in the late 17th century.

It is the most visited museum in the world and last year it welcomed nine million people in its spacious halls and galleries.

Núñez, a former police chief in the capital who became interior minister last week, said he was aware of “a great vulnerability” in the security of museums in France.

Last month, criminals used an angle grinder to break into the Natural History Museum in Paris and made off with gold samples worth 600,000 euros ($700,000).

Earlier this month, thieves stole two plates and a vase from a museum in the central city of Limoges, with losses estimated at €6.5 million.

Last year, four thieves stole snuff boxes and other objects from another Paris museum, breaking into a display case with axes and baseball bats.

But thefts at the Louvre have been less frequent.

A painting by the French painter Camille Corot disappeared from the museum in 1998 and has never been recovered.

In 1911, an Italian museum worker stole the Mona Lisa, but it was recovered and today sits behind safety glass.

French President Emmanuel Macron promised in January that the Louvre would be redesigned after its director expressed alarm about the dire conditions inside.

Dati said on Sunday that new security measures would be part of the renovation plan.