Editor’s Note
This article examines the systemic security failures at the Louvre Museum, which enabled the 2025 crown jewels heist. While institutional blame has been widely assigned, our analysis looks beyond the immediate lapses to explore the deeper structural and cultural vulnerabilities that left one of the world’s most iconic institutions exposed.
Police officers investigate after the break-in at the Musée du Louvre in Paris, October 19, 2025.
DIMITAR DILKOFF/AFP
The Louvre is still reeling from the October 19 heist in which jewels from the French crown were stolen from the Apollo Gallery. Much is already known about the institution’s glaring security lapses. The Sénat, the Court of Accounts, and the Ministry of Culture have publicly criticized the museum’s leadership, blaming its managers for negligence. However, not everything had yet come to light.
A 2018 security audit conducted for the museum by jeweler Van Cleef & Arpels specifically identified the balcony used by the burglars as a weak point and warned that it could be accessed by a freight elevator, Le Monde has learned. Until now, Parisian prosecutors investigating the case had not been informed of the report – even though it could open new investigative leads, such as identifying possible orchestrators who benefited from the document’s leak.
In 2018, amid rising concern from the Paris police and among luxury brands in the capital over a surge of armed robberies, including around the Louvre, the museum, then led by Jean-Luc Martinez, commissioned a security audit from the highly regarded security and safety division of Van Cleef & Arpels. The museum’s president had already received a worrying report on the issue from the National Institute for Advanced Studies in Security and Justice a year earlier. Considering its findings alarming but too broad, he sought more detailed recommendations to guide investments aimed at better protecting France’s national treasures.