PARIS: France ordered a security review at the Louvre and checks at other cultural sites on Monday while a hunt was underway for thieves who lifted priceless crown jewels in an audacious daylight heist at the world’s most popular museum.
In what some politicians branded a national humiliation, four people broke into the Louvre on Sunday using a crane to smash an upstairs window. They took objects from a gallery for royal jewellery before escaping on motorbikes. Some media dubbed it the “heist of the century”.
Crowds gathered outside the still-closed museum on Monday, some snapping the now infamous window. “I’m passing by here just to immortalise this little moment, which is not very glorious for France, said Victor Sauvageot.
The break-in raised awkward questions about security at the Louvre, which had 8.7 million visitors in 2024 and is home to artworks such as the Mona Lisa. “What is certain is that we failed,” Justice Minister Gerard Darmanin acknowledged to France Inter radio.
“Someone was capable of putting a crane truck in the open in the streets of Paris, to have people walk up for a couple of minutes and take priceless jewels and give France a deplorable image.” The Culture and Interior Ministers agreed in an emergency meeting to investigate what went wrong and to strengthen security measures where necessary at cultural institutions across the nation.
“For too long we have looked into the security of visitors but not the security of art works,” Culture Minister Rachida Dati told M6TV, adding that she was hoping to put in place shortcuts to public procurement rules to speed up security enhancements in museums. The robbery took between six and seven minutes and was carried out by people who were unarmed but who threatened guards with angle grinders, a prosecutor said.
The probe has been entrusted to a specialist police unit that has a high success rate in cracking high-profile robberies. “I would like to understand for myself how it was done,” said another visitor to the site, 56-year-old Daniela Fernandes da Costa, from Brazil.
Published in Dawn, October 21st, 2025
