Paris: In a daring daylight robbery, thieves armed with power tools broke into the Louvre Museum in Paris on Sunday morning and escaped with eight pieces of priceless jewellery in a heist that lasted barely seven minutes, according to French authorities.
The robbery took place around 9:30 a.m. (07:30 GMT) inside the Louvre’s famed Galerie d’Apollon- home to the French crown jewels and the Regent diamond, one of the world’s most valuable gems. France’s Ministry of the Interior confirmed the incident, saying the thieves managed to flee with eight items, while a ninth, the crown of Empress Eugénie, wife of Napoleon III, was found nearby after being dropped during their escape. The Regent diamond, valued at over $60 million and housed in the same gallery, was curiously left untouched.
“Beyond their market value, these items hold immense historical and cultural significance,” the ministry said in a statement, adding that no one was injured during the robbery.
President Emmanuel Macron remarked on the heist as “an attack on a heritage that we cherish because it is our History,” vowing that “the works will be recovered and the perpetrators brought to justice.”
Le vol commis au Louvre est une atteinte à un patrimoine que nous chérissons car il est notre Histoire.
Nous retrouverons les œuvres et les auteurs seront traduits en justice. Tout est mis en œuvre, partout, pour y arriver, sous la conduite du parquet de Paris.…
— Emmanuel Macron (@EmmanuelMacron) October 19, 2025
Culture Minister Rachida Dati described the heist as very quick and highly professional. “We arrived just minutes after the alert. The operation lasted almost four minutes — they were clearly experts,” Dati told reporters.
The Louvre, the world’s most-visited museum and home to the Mona Lisa, announced that it would remain closed for the day for exceptional reasons. Police cordoned off the area, shutting the museum gates and nearby roads as forensic experts arrived to collect evidence.
Interior Minister Laurent Nunez said that the thieves used a basket lift to reach the museum’s windows and then cut through the glass with a disc cutter to enter. They escaped on motorbikes before police could respond.
Informations relatives au vol par effraction survenu ce dimanche 19 octobre au musée du Louvre. pic.twitter.com/Qb1G8Jgg1w
— Musée du Louvre (@MuseeLouvre) October 19, 2025
The Louvre has faced high-profile thefts in the past. Its most famous came in 1911 when Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa was stolen by a former museum employee and recovered two years later in Florence. In 1983, two Renaissance-era suits of armour were stolen and were not recovered until nearly 40 years later.
Recent months have seen a string of robberies targeting French museums. In September, thieves used industrial tools to steal gold samples worth €600,000 from Paris’s Natural History Museum. Last November, four masked men armed with axes and bats looted snuffboxes and artefacts from the Cognacq-Jay Museum in broad daylight.
