All four thieves bolted through a service stairwell and escaped on two motorbikes positioned on the Quai du Louvre.
The world’s largest museum became the scene of a dramatic heist on Sunday, as armed thieves looted the Louvre’s gallery of imperial jewels.
French authorities say four masked men dressed as construction workers scaled the Seine-facing wing of the Louvre Museum around 9:30 a.m., using a hydraulic lift to reach a second-floor window of the Galerie d’Apollon.
During the reported four- to seven-minute heist, two of the thieves used heavy-duty angle grinders to cut open museum cases designed to withstand small-arms fire, while their partners blocked the corridor to delay response teams.
All four then bolted through a service stairwell and escaped on two motorbikes positioned on the Quai du Louvre, vanishing into Paris’s Left Bank along with at least eight jewels linked to the Napoleonic dynasty.
“They knew exactly what they were doing,” a police source told Le Monde. “It was surgical—professional work.”
Among the missing artifacts, according to France’s Culture Ministry, are some of the most valuable pieces ever crafted for Europe’s royal courts—including an emerald-and-diamond necklace set among more than 1,000 stones gifted by Napoleon to his second wife, Marie-Louise of Austria, in 1810.
The ornate set, created by jeweler François-Régnault Nitot, contains 32 emeralds and 1,138 diamonds and had been acquired by the Louvre in 2004 for €3.7 million.
Other stolen items include a diamond bow brooch and diadem of Empress Eugénie, the last French empress and wife of Napoleon III, and her diamond-studded reliquary brooch crafted in 1855 by Paul-Alfred Bapst, containing the 17th-century Mazarin diamonds once gifted to King Louis XIV.
Also missing is a sapphire diadem and necklace once worn by Queen Marie-Amélie and Queen Hortense, containing 24 Ceylon sapphires and over 1,000 diamonds that can be detached and worn as brooches.
One relic, Empress Eugénie’s gold crown set with 1,354 diamonds and 56 emeralds, was recovered outside the museum.
It was damaged but reported intact by French officials who believe the thieves dropped it during their escape and called the loss “incalculable.”
Empress Eugénie’s crown was one of two royal jewels recovered near the Louvre following the theft.
President Emmanuel Macron vowed the culprits would be caught, saying the jewels “belong not only to France but to humanity’s shared history.”
Meanwhile, the Louvre remains closed for forensic work as the investigation and the hunt for the perpetrators continue.
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