Editor’s Note
This article details the brazen 2023 daylight heist at the Louvre, where thieves used a moving truck and a ladder to breach the Apollo Gallery. The operation, executed in just seven minutes, highlights significant security vulnerabilities.
On October 19, in broad daylight, four men parked a moving truck with a ladder underneath the Galerie d’Apollon (Apollo Gallery) at the Louvre Museum.
The gang took only seven minutes to steal loot valued at approximately $102 million. This includes a diamond and emerald necklace that Napoleon gave to Empress Maria Luisa, jewels belonging to 19th-century queens Maria Amelia and Hortensia, and the pearl and diamond tiara of Empress Eugenie.
After exiting the building, they escaped on two scooters waiting outside before getting into cars. One of the stolen items, the crown adorned with diamonds and emeralds that belonged to Eugenie, wife of Napoleon III, fell during the escape.
Four people (three men and one woman) have already been charged for the robbery on October 29 and November 1. Three of these are alleged members of the so-called “commando” team and face preliminary charges of organized gang robbery and criminal conspiracy. Their DNA was found at the scene or on objects related to the robbery.
Police detained four more suspects this Tuesday. French media report that one of the latest arrestees, a 39-year-old man, could be the fourth member of the team believed to have carried out the robbery. Furthermore, case investigators suspect he is the individual who later disappeared in a white van parked south of Paris. This van is the focus of the investigation, as it is believed to have been used to transport the jewels.
The newspaper Le Parisien, citing investigation sources, revealed on Tuesday that the heist was meticulously planned and authorities are exploring the possibility of foreign funding. According to the sources consulted, the “clients” who commissioned the robbery have a “Slavic accent” and promised the thieves a payment of 15,000 euros.
Art recovery expert Arthur Brand told CNN that the stolen jewels “are the crown jewels of Napoleon, his wife, and his successors. They are the natural pride of France.”
Amid criticism of the Louvre Museum’s security failures, the newspaper Le Monde revealed this Tuesday that in 2018, “amid growing concern from Parisian police and the capital’s luxury brands over the increase in armed robberies, even around the Louvre,” the museum, then led by Jean-Luc Martinez, commissioned a security audit from the prestigious Van Cleef & Arpels security division.
The two-page report with three visual diagrams explicitly focused on the balcony overlooking the Apollo Gallery, the very place where two thieves entered.
A security report from the Louvre Museum had already warned in 2018 about the vulnerability of the balcony through which, on October 19, thieves entered and stole eight jewels that have not yet been recovered. This was revealed by the Parisian newspaper Le Monde, which accessed the audit that points out, “with great precision,” the risk posed by a balcony located on the building’s facade facing the Seine River. The document prepared by security experts from the jewelry firm Van Cleef & Arpels even mentions the possible use of a service lift to gain access. Thus, the warnings could explain the strategy used by the thieves last October, given the coincidences with their ‘modus operandi.’
