Louvre Heist: thieves snatch €88 million of Crown Jewels in daylight

When François Dupont, director of the Musée du Louvre, learned that the Galerie d'Apollon had been hit by a daylight robbery, the news sent shockwaves through Paris. On 19 October 2025 at 9:30 a.m. CEST, eight priceless pieces of the French Crown Jewels—valued at exactly €88 million—vanished from the museum’s most secure wing. The audacious strike, later dubbed the Louvre robbery, lasted just under eight minutes, yet its aftershocks are already reshaping museum security across Europe.

Background: The Louvre and the Crown Jewels

The Musée du Louvre, a national museum founded in 1793 and housed in the historic Louvre Palace, draws nearly nine million visitors each year, making it the world’s most frequented cultural site. Its Galerie d'Apollon, commissioned by Louis XIV between 1661 and 1663, has long served as the showcase for the French Crown Jewels—a collection that includes crowns, diadems, scepters and other regalia dating back to the Ancien Régime. The Crown of Empress Eugénie alone, a gold, diamond and pearl masterpiece created in 1855, carries an insured value of €9.2 million.

Security at the Louvre has been overseen by Securitas Direct France since 2018. The firm deploys roughly 300 guards, motion sensors, glass‑break detectors and a network of CCTV cameras that monitor every gallery around the clock. Yet, as museum insiders later admitted, the protocols governing temporary construction‑site access had never been stress‑tested against a coordinated internal breach.

The Day of the Heist

At precisely 9:30 a.m., two men in bright yellow and orange high‑visibility vests rolled a monte‑meuble—a motor‑driven hoist commonly used for moving furniture—along the Quai François Mitterrand promenade. Wearing black balaclavas, they clambered onto a first‑storey balcony on the Louvre’s south side and began cutting a large glass window that opened onto the Galerie d'Apollon.

Simultaneously, a third accomplice, positioned on the riverbank, kept a lookout. Within four minutes the thieves forced open the display cases, extracting nine items before the alarms blared. Guarded by two Securitas Direct France officers, the assailants brandished a disc cutter and threatened the guards, who managed to radio for backup before retreating to safety.

In a twist, the Crown of Empress Eugénie was abandoned on the quay as the thieves fled, reducing their final haul to eight items. The crew descended the hoist’s ladder, jumped onto waiting motor‑scooters, and sped north along the Seine before vanishing onto the Boulevard Périphérique and onto the A6 autoroute heading south. The whole operation lasted exactly seven minutes and 52 seconds, according to the French National Gendarmerie.

How the Thieves Bypassed Security

• Exploitation of a construction‑site access loophole that allowed the monte‑meuble to be positioned within metres of the gallery.
• Use of a high‑speed disc cutter capable of silently slicing tempered glass, delaying sensor activation.
• Coordinated intimidation of guards, preventing an immediate lockdown of the museum’s internal alarms.
• Rapid exit strategy involving pre‑staged scooters and a predetermined route that avoided major police checkpoints.

Security analyst Dr. Claire Lemoine of the Paris Institute of Criminology notes, “The thieves studied the museum’s daily routines for weeks. By posing as construction workers they blended into a legitimate activity, something the Louvre’s security drills never prepared for.”

Reactions: Authorities, Museum, Public

Within forty‑five minutes of the alarm, the French National Gendarmerie launched a nationwide manhunt codenamed Opération CouronneParis. Colonel Lucien Marchand, head of the Brigade de Répression du Banditisme (BRB), addressed reporters at the Gendarmerie headquarters on 2 Allée de Bercy, stating, “We have mobilized all relevant units, including our specialized art‑theft task force and Interpol’s Stolen Works of Art unit in Lyon. The investigation will be exhaustive.”

Inside the museum, Dupont issued a somber statement: “The loss of these irreplaceable symbols of our heritage is a wound to the French Republic. We are working day and night with authorities to recover the items and to reinforce every vulnerable point of our security architecture.”

Visitors who arrived later that morning found the Louvre closed for the first time in a decade. The museum announced a three‑day shutdown, with the Galerie d'Apollon remaining sealed indefinitely for forensic analysis. Meanwhile, crowds gathered along the Seine to discuss the heist, many expressing disbelief that “the world’s most famous museum could be robbed in broad daylight.”

Implications and Next Steps

The €88 million loss represents not only a financial blow but also a cultural one. Insurance assessors have already begun processing claims, while the French Ministry of Culture has pledged €12 million for upgraded surveillance, additional K9 units, and a revised access‑control protocol for any external contractors.

Internationally, museums in London, New York and Tokyo have cited the incident as a wake‑up call. The International Council of Museums (ICOM) is convening an emergency summit in Geneva later this month to discuss a unified response to high‑profile art thefts.

Experts predict the investigation could stretch 12 to 18 months, drawing on precedents like the 1990 Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum theft, which remains unsolved after three decades. In the meantime, the search for the missing Crown Jewels continues, with Interpol monitoring a surge of leads in Eastern Europe and the Middle East.

Key Facts

• Date & time: 19 Oct 2025, 9:30 a.m. CEST
• Location: Galerie d'Apollon, Musée du Louvre, Paris
• Stolen items: 8 pieces of the French Crown Jewels, total value €88 million
• Perpetrators: Disguised as construction workers, used a monte‑meuble and disc cutter
• Operation name: Opération Couronne, led by the Brigade de Répression du Banditisme