Thieves carried out a brazen seven-minute heist on the Louvre Museum in Paris on Sunday morning, breaking into the famed landmark utilizing a basket carry to pressure open a window, smash show instances and steal jewellery that has “inestimable value,” France’s inside minister and the museum mentioned.
The break-in occurred in broad daylight whereas vacationers have been already contained in the Louvre, the world’s most visited museum. It was compelled to shut within the aftermath of the incident as authorities started to research. Police sealed the museum gates and guests have been ushered out. No accidents have been reported, in line with spokespeople for the Louvre.
“A robbery took place this morning at the opening of the Louvre Museum,” French Tradition Minister Rachida Dati wrote on X, whereas the museum cited “exceptional reasons” for the closure.
“An investigation has begun, and a detailed list of the stolen items is being compiled,” the assertion mentioned. “Beyond their market value, these items have inestimable heritage and historical value.”
France’s ministers of tradition and inside have been on the Louvre and dealing with the museum’s administration in addition to regulation enforcement, the assertion continued, including that “all possible measures are being taken to recover the stolen items.”
The inside ministry equally mentioned that forensic work was underway Sunday morning and a exact stock of the stolen objects was being compiled.
A basket carry utilized by thieves is seen on the Louvre museum Sunday Oct.19, 2025 in Paris.
Alexander Turnbull / AP
Video from the scene confirmed confused vacationers being ushered out of the glass pyramid and surrounding courtyards as officers shut the iron gates and closed close by streets alongside the Seine.
Inside Minister Laurent Nuñez referred to as it a “major robbery,” saying the intruders entered from the surface utilizing a basket carry. He mentioned on France Inter radio that the heist took seven minutes and the thieves used a disc cutter to slice by the panes. He mentioned it was “manifestly a team that had done scouting.”
The Galerie d’Apollon is a vaulted corridor within the Denon wing that shows a part of the French Crown Jewels beneath a ceiling painted by King Louis XIV’s court docket artist, in line with the ministry.
French day by day Le Parisien reported the thieves entered by way of the Seine-facing facade, the place development is underway, and used a freight elevator to achieve the gallery. After breaking home windows, they reportedly took 9 items from the jewellery assortment of Napoleon and the Empress. One stolen jewel was later discovered outdoors the museum, the paper reported, including that the merchandise was believed to be Empress Eugénie’s crown and that it had been damaged.
Safety across the marquee works stays tight. The Mona Lisa is protected by bulletproof glass and a customized high-tech show system as a part of broader anti-theft measures throughout the museum.
Staffing and safety have been flashpoints on the Louvre. The museum delayed opening throughout a June workers walkout over overcrowding and persistent understaffing. Unions have warned that mass tourism strains safety and customer administration.
This seize taken from video exhibits police standing outdoors the Louvre museum, Sunday, Oct. 19, 2025, in Paris.
AP Photograph
It wasn’t instantly clear whether or not staffing ranges performed any function in Sunday’s theft.
In January, President Emmanuel Macron introduced a decade-long “Louvre New Renaissance” plan — roughly €700 million to modernize infrastructure, ease crowding and provides the Leonardo da Vinci masterpiece its personal devoted gallery by 2031 — however employees say reduction has been gradual to achieve the ground.
The theft, lower than half an hour after doorways opened, echoes different latest European museum raids.
In 2019, thieves smashed vitrines in Dresden’s Inexperienced Vault and carried off diamond-studded royal jewels price a whole lot of hundreds of thousands 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 Fashionable Artwork and escaped with 5 work, together with a Picasso.
The Louvre has a protracted historical past of thefts and tried robberies. Probably the most well-known got here in 1911, when the Mona Lisa vanished from its body, stolen by Vincenzo Peruggia, a former employee who hid contained in the museum and walked out with the portray below 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 art work.
Dwelling to greater than 33,000 works spanning antiquities, sculpture and portray — from Mesopotamia, Egypt and the classical world to European masters — the Louvre’s star sights embrace the Mona Lisa, the Venus de Milo and the Winged Victory of Samothrace. The museum can draw as much as 30,000 guests a day.
