The Louvre Heist: Success in Simplicity?
- deetyasasikumar
- 2 days ago
- 2 min read
It’s a cloudy day on October 19th, 2025, in Paris, France. The Louvre, filled with many tourists on that Sunday, seems to have a busy day ahead of itself. Only an hour later, alarms start to blare as the most prized collection of jewels in all of Paris, collections from French royalty itself, suddenly vanish within 7 minutes. How could this happen? How was the greatest heist of the century pulled off?
The Louvre Museum in Paris, France, at sunset.
The Louvre is known as one of the treasures of Paris. Inside the museum, pieces such as the Mona Lisa and Hammurabi’s Code are protected by security, cameras, and, for some artifacts, bulletproof glass. How did a heist still occur despite all of this?
At around 9:30a.m., a truck with a furniture lift high enough to reach the second and third floors of the Louvre stops at the museum. The thieves, wearing high-visibility vests, come out of the truck and stand on the lift, holding power tools. Tourists and civilians walk by, but unbeknownst to them, no maintenance was scheduled for that day. A thief cuts through the glass window, and two to three thieves enter the Apollo Gallery and start to smash down various cases. The glass may have been bulletproof, but it was not cut-proof. Soon, security is notified, and they quickly notify the police. By the time they arrive at the scene, it’s too late.
The thieves steal nine priceless jewels, worth over $100 million dollars. The stolen artifacts include the jewelry of Empress Louise and Queen Marie-Amelie. The thieves drop the crown of Empress Eugénie, and it is recovered by the police. The thieves escape on bikes, and they are lost in Paris traffic. Police and security are left stunned, wondering how such security breaches went unnoticed. After a few weeks, the thieves were eventually caught and identified because of how much DNA they left behind, but the jewels were never recovered.
Image from NPR
The reason the thieves were able to get away with their heist wasn’t thanks to hiding in the dark or disabling security; it was the opposite. They became part of the crowd, blending in as workers. Their appearance, combined with underprepared security, led them to successfully steal the jewels from one of France’s greatest museums.
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