Another Louvre Robbery: A Look Back at The Museum’s Most Famous Heists

Paris woke on Sunday to an alarming headline: the Louvre Museum, the world’s most visited museum, had been robbed.

Just half an hour after the Louvre opened its doors on Sunday, thieves reportedly broke into the museum’s Galerie d’Apollon – the grand, gold-adorned hall that houses what remains of the French Crown Jewels – and made off with jewelry which Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez said to be “of immeasurable heritage value.” They are believed to have gained entry by breaking a window reached by a goods lift on a truck outside the building. They then reached the gallery, pried open the display cases, and fled on scooters through the streets of early morning Paris. Le Monde reported that the heist only took seven minutes in total. Authorities say one of the stolen pieces was found discarded near the Louvre shortly after the robbery – a 19th-century crown once belonging to Empress Eugénie, wife of Napoleon III. The suspects remain at large as a police manhunt continues across Paris. No one was injured, but the Louvre was closed for the day, and the loss reverberated far beyond its gilded walls.

It’s not the first time the museum has suffered a theft. The most famous theft, of course, came in 1911, when the Mona Lisa vanished. One morning, staff arrived to find the small painting missing from its frame. The culprit, Vincenzo Peruggia, was an Italian handyman who worked at the museum. He smuggled the painting out under his coat and kept it hidden for two years, with the motive of repatriating this Italian treasure. When the painting was finally recovered in Florence, it returned to Paris not just intact, but transformed – now the most recognised artwork in the world. Ironically, it was her disappearance that secured her global fame.

Then in 1976, a trio of thieves scaled scaffolding on the museum’s exterior, broke through a window, and made off with a diamond-encrusted sword once used at the 1824 coronation of King Charles X. The weapon has never been recovered.

The Louvre experienced another, more mysterious theft in 1983. On May 31st 1983, two pieces of ornate 16th-century armour vanished from the museum’s collection – a helmet and breastplate made in Milan and donated to the museum by the Rothschild family. How the thieves slipped away was never revealed, and the items remained missing for nearly forty years. They resurfaced in 2021, when a Bordeaux family asked an expert to value an inherited collection; he recognised the armour and alerted police, who confirmed it matched pieces listed in France’s national database of stolen artifacts.

In 1998, a small landscape by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot called “Le Chemin de Sèvres” was stolen directly from the wall. This theft brought about a significant upgrade of the museum’s security. This was the most recent theft before this weekend.

What makes the Louvre so vulnerable, paradoxically, is also what makes it extraordinary: openness. It is a museum of public access. Millions pass through its doors each year, drawn by the promise of proximity to these great masterpieces – to stand face to face with genius. That openness carries risk, but also purpose. Theft may momentarily remove an object, but it cannot take away the stories and craftsmanship that fill the Louvre’s halls. 

Lead photo credit : Wilfredo Rafael Rodriguez Hernandez, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons