On Sunday morning, a gang of thieves pulled off a daring seven-minute heist in The Louvre in Paris – snatching several “priceless” items of jewellery from the famous museum.
The city has been left “shocked” by the theft in its beloved museum, which welcomes tens of thousands of tourists a day.
As French police launched a manhunt for the thieves, the heist was compared to a popular Netflix drama named “Lupin”. It tells the story of an infamous French thief, named Arsène Lupin, who steals from the rich.
What happened at the Louvre?
At 9:30am on Sunday, 19 October, a group of masked thieves broke into the Louvre’s Galerie d’Apollon in Paris.
The opulent hall houses some of France’s most historical and priceless artefacts – including what is left of the French crown jewels.
In just seven minutes, the thieves are reported to have taken around nine “priceless” jewels from a collection once owned by Napoleon Bonaparte’s family and the Empress Marie Louise.
The gilded Galerie d’Apollon sits on the south-east side of the Louvre, with a decorated ceiling that was painted by Charles Le Brun, King Louis XIV’s painter.
The group of thieves are understood to have escaped the museum with the loot on scooters.
Following the incident, the museum was closed and tourists evacuated from the museum, with the police surrounding the building.
How did they steal the jewels?
The thieves are thought to have gained entry to the first-floor window through a mechanised lift attached to a vehicle.
Images of the supposed lift, similar to a cherry picker, still in place by the window, have emerged.
According to France’s Interior Minister Laurent Nunez, the thieves gained access by breaking a window with an angle grinder, like a small chainsaw, and were able to open two display cases.
Mr Nunez told French radio station that the thieves were “clearly a team that had been scouting” the building.
The thieves left one item behind in their haste, which was found near the Louvre. It is understood by French media to be the crown of Empress Eugenie. However, officials have yet to confirm this is the item in question.
According to Le Parisien, police found two angle grinders at the scene, a blowtorch, gasoline, gloves, a walkie-talkie, a blanket, a crown, and a yellow vest allegedly used by the criminals to pass themselves off as workers.
In a statement to the media outlet the mayor of Paris Centre, Ariel Weil, likened the incident to the Netflix show “Lupin” which depicts the antics of a fictional thief in Paris.
He said: “It’s a shock…It’s clear we’re in Arsène Lupin. It’s been a movie script up until now. It’s hard to imagine that it’s seemingly so easy to burglarise the Louvre.”
How have police reacted?
Police have launched an investigation into the incident and a hunt for the perpetrators.
Immediately after the theft, police sealed off access to the museum, including one major road along the riverbank in front of it, according to the BBC.
Pictures of the scene showed the large extendable ladder which the thieves allegedly used to scale the building.
In a strong warning, Interior Minister Nuñez said the heist was an attack on France’s heritage and history, warning that investigators have been fully mobilised and that everything is being done to arrest the culprits.
When was the last robbery at The Louvre?
Paris’ mayor has admitted the incident “will inevitably raise security issues”, although thefts from the museum are rare.
The most infamous theft from The Louvre, before this Sunday, was the 1911 robbery of Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, when a museum employee stole the painting. He was eventually caught, and the painting was returned to the museum two years later.
More recently, in 1998, a 19th-century painting by artist Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot was stolen. According to reports at the time, the painting was sliced out of its frame unbeknownst to security guards and staff.
