Thieves stole “incalculable value” jewels from the Louvre museum on a Sunday morning, with visitors inside
Thieves stole jewels “of incalculable value” from the Louvre in Paris, the most visited museum in the world, in an audacious seven-minute attack on Sunday, the French interior minister said.
Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez told radio station France Inter: “A major robbery occurred this morning at the Apollo Gallery. Individuals entered the Louvre museum from the outside, using an external freight elevator that was positioned on a truck.”
The Apollo Gallery houses the French crown jewels, as well as treasures such as Louis XIV’s collection of hard stone vases.
Two high-security display cases were attacked and eight of the nine items taken remain missing, including a tiara and necklace worn by Queen Marie-Amélie and Queen Hortense, according to a statement from the French Ministry of Culture.
French police examine an angle grinder and other objects believed to have been left by the perpetrators of Sunday’s robbery at the Louvre, in Paris, on October 19, 2025. Clément Lanot/CLPRESS
The thieves forced open a window with an angle grinder and stole jewelry that has “sentimental value and is priceless,” the Interior Minister added.
The robbery appears to have been committed by four criminals, who were not armed, but threatened the guards with angle grinders, revealed Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau.
Beccuau added that investigators do not exclude the possibility of foreign interference as a possible line of investigation into the robbery, but that they are keeping all leads open.
The thieves “lost or abandoned” a piece of jewelry – the crown of Empress Eugénie – wife of Napoleon III, during the daylight robbery, prosecutors revealed.
The ornate gold piece, which contains 1,354 diamonds and 56 emeralds, was damaged during the robbery. The French Ministry of Culture confirmed that the crown had been “abandoned” by the thieves when they fled the scene.
“In addition to their market value, the items have an inestimable heritage and historical value,” the Ministry of the Interior said in a statement.
Empress Eugénie’s crown displayed at the Louvre Museum in January 2020. French media reported that the crown had been recovered following Sunday’s theft, but had suffered damage. Stephanie de Sakutin/AFP/Getty Images
French President Emmanuel Macron stated that “everything is being done” to catch the suspects.
“The robbery committed at the Louvre is an attack on a heritage that we cherish because it is part of our history”, said Macron in X. “We will recover the works and the perpetrators will be brought to justice.”
A detailed list of stolen objects released by the Ministry of Culture revealed that a single sapphire earring from Queen Marie-Amélie and Queen Hortense, an emerald necklace and a pair of emerald earrings from Empress Marie-Louise, the “reliquary brooch” and Empress Eugénie’s tiara and large corsage bow brooch were stolen in the robbery.
An attempt to set fire to the truck used to carry out the robbery was prevented by a Louvre security agent, which forced the thief to flee, according to a statement from the Ministry of Culture.
Paris police opened an investigation into “aggravated robbery by an organized group and criminal conspiracy to commit a crime” under the authority of the Paris Public Prosecutor’s Office.
“Say, I will evacuate”
The robbery lasted just seven minutes, with the suspects fleeing on motorbikes, Nuñez told France Inter.
“Clearly, a team had been monitoring the site. It was obviously a very experienced team who acted very, very quickly,” the Interior Minister said.
“I am confident that we will quickly find the perpetrators and, above all, recover the stolen goods,” he added.
Video from the scene shows French police examining an abandoned furniture elevator, positioned near a corner of the Louvre, with the staircase leading to a broken balcony window.
According to Le Parisien, police found “two angle grinders, a blowtorch, gasoline, gloves, a walkie-talkie, a blanket and a crown” at the scene of the robbery. A yellow vest used by the perpetrators of the robbery to disguise themselves as workers was found a little further away, lost during their escape, the newspaper reports.
French police officers near a furniture elevator used by robbers on Sunday to enter the Louvre Museum, on Quai Francois Mitterrand, in Paris. Dimitar Dilkoff/AFP/Getty Images
A tour guide told CNN that he heard what sounded like “tapping” on the window as he led tourists through the Sala Apolo, before hearing security guards shouting to evacuate the place.
“I was trying to understand what was going on when I saw the museum staff making that noise. Then they turned around, very quickly, and started running and saying ‘get out, get out, get out, get out, evacuate!'” said Ryan el Mandari.
Ryan el Mandari tried to keep his group of visitors calm as they left the building, adding that they heard the sounds but “had no idea it was a robbery.”
“Meticulously” planned robbery
Where did the Louvre robbery take place?
“Priceless” jewels were stolen from the Louvre in Paris when thieves entered the Apolo Gallery from the outside.
Graphic: Renée Rigdon, CNN
The French Interior Ministry reported that the incident occurred at 09:30 local time and that the public was evacuated without incident.
The Minister of Culture, Rachida Dati, stated that the robbery occurred when the museum was opening. “No injuries were reported. I am at the scene with the museum staff and the police. The investigations are ongoing”, said Dati in a publication on X.
Christopher Marinello, founder of Art Recovery International, said that if thieves just want to make money as quickly as possible, they may melt the precious metals or cut the stones without regard to the integrity of the piece.
“We need to dismantle these gangs and find another approach, or we will miss things we will never see again,” Marinello told CNN.
The museum, which houses world-famous works of art including Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, said it would remain closed on Sunday due to “exceptional reasons”.
The Interior Ministry later stated that the closure was a security measure designed to preserve evidence for the investigation.
The mayor of Paris Center, Ariel Weil, told journalists that the thieves had “planned this meticulously, obviously” and that he did not remember the Louvre being the target of a robbery in more than a century. “I’m thinking, of course, of the Mona Lisa robbery in 1911, but I don’t remember any more recent robbery,” he said.
Last year, the Louvre received 8.7 million visitors, with tourists from the United States representing 13% of total visitors, second only to the French.
*Melissa Bell contributed to this article
