$100 Million Louvre Heist Exposes Crumbling Security at France’s Most Famous Museum

Royal jewels worth over $100 million stolen in bold daylight Louvre heist, exposing France’s security failures.

In one of the most audacious museum robberies in recent French history, masked thieves stole royal jewels valued at more than $100 million from Paris’s Louvre Museum in a seven-minute daylight raid that has left officials scrambling for answers.

Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau said the stolen treasures, including a tiara and earrings once belonging to Queens Marie-Amélie and Hortense, represent not only “economic damage” but “historical damage of immeasurable scale.” The crown of Empress Eugénie was later found discarded outside the museum, apparently dropped during the thieves’ motorcycle getaway.

The robbers used a crane to smash through an upstairs window of the Apollo Gallery, home to France’s remaining crown jewels, in a precision-timed attack that lasted less than ten minutes. Security footage reportedly shows four masked men, suggesting a meticulously planned operation possibly “commissioned to order,” according to investigators.

The Louvre’s director, Laurence des Cars, has not spoken publicly since the theft but is due to face a Senate committee on Wednesday amid mounting outrage over museum security. In January, Des Cars warned Culture Minister Rachida Dati that the museum’s systems were “dangerously obsolete.” France’s Court of Auditors later confirmed delays in security upgrades, noting that only a quarter of one Louvre wing was under proper surveillance.

The theft follows a string of recent cultural crimes, including a $1.5 million gold robbery at Paris’s Natural History Museum and a $7.6 million porcelain theft in Limoges.

The Louvre, visited by nearly nine million people last year, remains the world’s most popular museum. But as France’s cultural icons draw ever larger crowds, their defenses seem to be thinning.