Thieves break into Louvre museum, steal ‘priceless jewellery’

France 24 - French Culture Minister Rachida Dati on Sunday reported a theft at the Louvre in Paris as the world-renowned museum said it was closing for the day.

"A robbery took place this morning at the opening of the Louvre Museum," she wrote on X. The Louvre said it was closing for the day "for exceptional reasons", without providing further details on what had been stolen.

There were no injuries reported. Dati said she was at the museum and investigations were underway.

French Interior Minister Laurent Nunez said the “major robbery” said the thieves used a construction ladder to enter the building. They stole jewels of “priceless value” in an operation that “lasted seven minutes.” 

It was “manifestly a team that had done scouting”, he said, adding that the panes were cut “with a disc cutter”.

The interior ministry specified the location as the Galerie d’Apollon. 

Police sealed off the museum and evacuated visitors. New arrivals were turned away and nearby streets were closed, according to the interior ministry.

A police source told AFP that an unknown number of thieves arrived at the Louvre on a scooter armed with small chainsaws and used a construction ladder to reach the room they were targeting.

Louvre museum authorities could not immediately be reached for comment, according to French media reports.

But the Louvre confirmed that the museum was closed Sunday due to “exceptional reasons”, in a post on X.

According to French daily, Le Parisien, the criminals entered the sprawling building from the facade facing the Seine River, where construction work is underway.

After breaking the windows, they reportedly stole "nine pieces from the jewellery collection of Napoleon and the Empress", said the report. 

One jewellery piece stolen from Louvre was later found near the museum, a French minister said.

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 was 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 Galerie d’Apollon displays a selection of the French Crown Jewels. The museum can draw up to 30,000 visitors a day.