Louvre closed due to robbery--Updated

How horrible. A lot of questions....

Crazy how they managed to pull it off! I wouldn't be surprised if it was an inside job but you're right, Elizabeth, lots of questions....

I'm wondering what on earth would they do with the loot?

I hate to admit it, but there is some degree of cool in an art/jewel heist. Especially when the scene is fled via motorbikes.

Regardless, I hope they are caught!

"Especially when the scene is fled via motorbikes."

Naah, too much like "smash, grab, and go". Give me a subterranean tunnel* and a theft that takes days to notice the difference. :)

(*cool sci-fi tunnel digging machine for extra points)

In broad daylight, how brazen!
Dropped Empress Eugénie's crown (adorned with 1,354 diamonds and 56 emeralds) as they fled. Finger-pointing was going on among the thieves.

Unfortunately, the thieves or their contacts often melt down the gold and platinum and re-cut the large stones to prevent identification. I can only hope a payoff can be arranged so the jewelry can be recovered. Do major museums maintain insurance policies?

George Clooney, Brad Pitt and Matt Damon are filming a new movie?

Those jewels are considered a French heritage that belongs to the people and are on display for everyone to see. They were donated to the museum from several sources. In contrast, the Crown Jewels of England belong to the members of the royal family, not to the people.

When the armed thieves intruded, the guards herded the visitors in the room to safety and waited for armed backup and police. Thank goodness no one was injured or killed.

Unfortunately, the thieves or their contacts often melt down the gold
and platinum and re-cut the large stones to prevent identification.

That's what I'm afraid of: the same sad fate as some of the British medieval Crown Jewels. :O(

I'm interested that virtually all the comments are about the attack, often as a joke, and nobody but one talking about the visitors on the day or those of our members planning to visit in the next few days and weeks

Yeah, the jokes. This is a tremendous loss of heritage pieces for the French people as well as for future visitors to the museum.

The brief news blurb I saw didn't make it clear the robbery occurred during hours the museum was open. That is really brazen.

"That is really brazen"

That's why I mentioned "smash and grab". :(

That kind of thing leaves injuries/bodies. The heritage part I'll leave to the French.

So sad..yes after 9 a.m.
My husband and I were just there Wednesday and Thursday. The Jacques Louis David exhibit is great. I truly hope they recover everything intact and quickly.

I hope no one thinks I was joking about this crime. I'm not.

Does the Louvre not have security in the form
of cameras and sensors where the Crown Jewels were located? I also don’t understand how the glass cases displaying the Crown Jewels were not wired with alarms that would have caused all the officers in the Paris Police Prefecture— located one mile away on Ile de la Cite— to descend upon and surround the Louvre in minutes.

Notably, the glass display cases were not thick glass which might otherwise have slowed down the glass-cutting done to remove the Crown Jewels.

And reports are that security staff at the Louvre also had been thinned recently, with supervisors noting there was not enough security staff at the museum.

The British and Danish Crown Jewels are in the Tower of London and Rosenborg Castle—underground in vaults like bank vaults that lock automatically at any sign of tampering with the glass display cases.

What a lost opportunity that the Louvre did not do the same.

Let’s hope the thieves—who dropped one of the eight stolen jewelry pieces—will slip up again and get caught.

And soon.

My understanding from reading news reports, is that the guards were concerned with the safety of patrons and herded them out of the room while they summoned police. So an alarm would would have been redundant.

To answer Kenko’s doubts: The room was alarmed to the hilt. Cases were the solid ones. Robbers had perfected tools that got everything from parking the truck outside to getting away on their high powered scooters in 7 minutes before armed officers could arrive.
Paris has also had robberies of famous jewellery stores on the Place Vendome where a vehicle was used as a battering ram to break the windows and let the thieves inside during daylight. Organized professionals.
In all these cases, the safety of the humans present in the room or the boutiques was the first priority.

Not Ocean's Eleven; its a scene from the new season of Lupin.

Unfortunately, the thieves or their contacts often melt down the gold and platinum and re-cut the large stones to prevent identification

I doubt that. If that's what they wanted, there are much lower profile places to knock off to get fungible gold or diamonds. No, this was for the black market - likely will end up in the UAE or some such place. Or for the insurance ransom payout.

This is so damn alarming. It's just proof that these priceless relics of history aren't as forever as we think they are because they're placed in a museum. The fact that this was done in daylight is even more terrifying. Thank God they dropped the empress' crown. As a lover of art and culture and as a francophile, this really really sucks.

Alexander: third museum robbery since September. 700,000 euros of gold nuggets were stolen from the Natural History Museum in September.

I thought this article this morning from the BBC was the most interesting. Some of the points that interested me

• The localized alarm for the area was recently broken (hmmmm).
• The working theory from the police is that this involved organized crime.
• An art thief recovery expert says the jewels will likely be removed and recut, as a result there is a race to solve this crime quickly.
• There has been a rash of recent theft from French museums lately resulting in millions of dollars of stolen goods.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cg7nrlkg0zxo

And this. A summary of some high profile thefts over the years from around the world.

https://nationalpost.com/news/world/europe-canada-us-museum-heists

Random thoughts: Mid-day when they are open means lots of crowds. Both people in the museum and traffic in the area. Both would likely slow any police or security (who are concerned with the public's safety) more than it would slow the robbers (who are not concerned). I'm just guessing that anything that set off an alarm after hours might have been easier to respond to quickly. Either way, this wasn't random—I am sure a lot of thought went in to this heist prior to the actual commission of the crime.

P.S. I am not a detective or a burglar, but I play one online.

It wasn't mid-day. It was 9:30 am. Just a point of clarification.

The BBC link in Allan's recent post is blocked for me. This one--to an article with photos that lays out the timeline--I was able to access: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-fde5876a-c35c-48a2-b4cf-d255bd25611b

I've read in a couple of places that a widespread renovation of the Louvre is being discussed or is being planned, which would mean partial or complete closures; and security is one of the topics to be addressed in this renovation.

No steals things like this to melt them down or cut them up; they almost certainly in a private collection of a middle eastern billionaire or some other billionaire.

We had not seen them in decades, but did make the effort this fall and so saw them only a few weeks ago. There is not much of interest in that gallery -- mostly ugly ornate tableware. There are a few diadems and other jewels so if they only stole a few things, they may have gotten most of what is interesting. they only had to hit 3 or 4 cases to have most of the crown jewels.

Have the French checked if any penguin escaped recently from a zoo? They should probably begin their investigation there

??

Care to fill in the apparent gap in my knowledge base, so that statement makes sense?

Have the French checked if any penguin escaped recently from a zoo?
They should probably begin their investigation there

If I recall right, one of Batman's foes was the Penguin. A fowl most foul indeed.

A penguin was spotted at the Paris “No Kings” march.

Fingers McGraw is the villainous gem stealing penguin in the Wallace & Gromit series.

Do you think the Paris Prefecture of Police is onto this Fingers McGraw character?

BBC website is showing a tongue-in-cheek article about the German lift-maker suddenly famous from the Louvre robbery. Here is the link:

Lift-maker in Louvre Robbery

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cpd2zyl304do

We were in the Apollo Gallery on Friday afternoon and took pictures of all the items now stolen. I assumed the display case glass was unbreakable - guess not. Unfathomable to think we may never see these items again.

No one thought it was odd that 'workers' were doing 'work' on a 2nd story window on a Sunday morning?

Some arrests have been made:

AP Breaking News of Louvre Arrests

Early media reports are of two arrests. One report says one suspect was taken into custody at Charles DeGaulle Airport as he prepared to leave on a flight for Algeria

The second suspect is reported to have been arrested in Paris. Both of the arrested suspects lived in a suburb of Paris.

There were four suspects in the Louvre heist. Police have not yet said how many total arrests have been made.
There also is no word, at this hour, if any of the historic jewelry has been recovered.

The jewels were not privately insured, the French Ministry of Culture stated in a press release to the daily newspaper Le Parisien. French law prohibits entities like the Louvre from insuring its property, except when part of a collection is moved or loaned to another institution, Romain Déchelette, president of France-based Serex Assurances, a fine art insurer, told CBS News.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/paris-louvre-museum-jewelry-heist-arrests-made-prosecutors/

Interesting tidbit of info.

That is interesting.
I also read that the Louvre’s security cameras had a “blind spot” where the thieves entered at the corner of the building where the Apollo Gallery is located. The only security camera on that side of the Louvre was facing AWAY from the area where the thieves entered. This prevented any warning in real time that the thieves were about to break in through the second floor window
Interesting— and tragic—that this was not known and corrected before the heist happened last weekend.
One of the issues during the strike by Louvre employees back in June was that security personnel and equipment had been reduced due to funding cuts.

"Two suspects arrested over Louvre museum jewellery heist"

https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20251026-two-arrested-over-louvre-museum-heist-sources-close-to-the-investigation-say

Paris police chief Patrice Faure told senators the first alert to police came not from the Louvre’s security systems but from a cyclist outside who dialed the emergency line after seeing helmeted men with a basket lift. He acknowledged that aging, partly analog cameras and slow fixes left seams; $93 million of CCTV cabling work won’t finish before 2029–30, and the Louvre’s camera authorization even lapsed in July. Officers arrived fast, he said, but the delay came earlier in the chain. (AP Report)

What does this mean--- the Louvre’s camera authorization even lapsed in July.

More people rounded up but still no recovery of the stolen stuff.