The Louvre reopened on Wednesday to long lines beneath its landmark Paris glass pyramid, three days after one of the highest-profile museum thefts of the century stunned the world for its audacity and scale.
The thieves slipped in and out of the world’s most visited museum – making off with eight pieces from France’s Crown Jewels – a cultural wound that some officials compared to the burning of Notre-Dame cathedral in 2019.
The Sunday raid – steps from the Mona Lisa and valued at over $100 million – comes just months after a staff strike warned of chronic understaffing and under-resourced protections, with too few eyes on too many rooms, raising pointed questions about security failures.
Authorities say the thieves spent less than four minutes inside the Louvre on Sunday morning: a freight lift was wheeled to the Seine-facing façade, a window was forced open, and two vitrines were smashed.
Then came the getaway on motorbikes through central Paris. Alarms had gone off drawing agents to the gallery and forcing the intruders to bolt.
The thieves made away with a total of eight objects, including a sapphire diadem, necklace and single earring from a set linked to 19th-century queens Marie-Amélie and Hortense.
They also made off with an emerald necklace and earrings tied to Empress Marie-Louise, Napoleon Bonaparte’s second wife, as well as reliquary brooch. Empress Eugénie’s diamond diadem and her large corsage-bow brooch – an imperial ensemble of rare craftsmanship – were also part of the loot.
One piece – the emerald-set imperial crown of Empress Eugénie, with more than 1,300 diamonds – was later found outside the museum, damaged but recoverable. The jewels remain missing; no arrests have been announced.
Wednesday’s opening followed a routine closure on Tuesday, a day when the museum is normally shut.
Crowds bunched at the barriers as they were being removed. Inside, the scene of the crime – the Apollo Gallery housing the Crown Diamonds – stayed sealed, a folding screen obscuring the doorway at the gallery’s rotunda entrance.
The Louvre’s other star attractions – from the Venus de Milo to the Winged Victory of Samothrace – were open again, with one visitor from Madrid, Tomás Álvarez, observing, “I didn’t notice extra security – guards as always, and no police inside. It felt like a normal day.”
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