【Paris, Franc】Historic Louvre Heist: What Do the Reports That Warned of the Museum’s Security Flaws Say?

Le 3 novembre 2025, à Paris, une personne photographie la fenêtre du musée du Louvre qui a été fracturée par des cambrioleurs le 19 octobre, au niveau de la galerie d’Apollon.
(ADNAN FARZAT / NURPHOTO / AFP)
The investigation into the “heist of the century” at the Louvre Museum, which occurred on October 19, is still ongoing, and the loot, estimated at 88 million euros, remains missing to this day. But could this robbery have been avoided? According to at least three reports, revealed in recent weeks by the press and the Court of Auditors, warnings about the museum’s security have multiplied. The Louvre assures that the current management was not informed of their existence. Franceinfo reviews their content.

The museum neglected security in favor of attractiveness, judges the Court of Auditors in a report (PDF) published on November 6, 2025, eighteen days after the robbery. In this document consulted by franceinfo, the financial jurisdiction responsible for auditing public accounts is highly critical of the Louvre. It emphasizes that between 2018 and 2024, “the museum prioritized visible and attractive operations,” such as artwork acquisitions, “to the detriment of the maintenance and renovation of buildings and technical installations, particularly those related to safety and security.” The report further recommends that the great Parisian museum “prioritize investment priorities.”

On November 25, Le Monde revealed that a study conducted by the jeweler Van Cleef & Arpels had, as early as 2018, precisely described the museum’s potential security flaw. Seven years before the Louvre heist, it reported the points of “vulnerability” represented by the French window and the balcony through which the criminals entered to steal the jewels, as well as a possible access via a service lift, according to the newspaper. The risks highlighted by this audit correspond to the modus operandi of the robbers. Using a work platform, they managed to reach the balcony of the Galerie d’Apollon, then broke the window with a disc grinder to steal eight jewels from the French Crown.

These are the terms used by a 2017 security audit conducted by the National Institute for Advanced Studies in Security and Justice (INHESJ) to describe the museum’s situation. This document, which franceinfo was able to consult, notes security “deficiencies” that could lead to potentially “dramatic” consequences.

The audit specifies that “the institution has not integrated genuine security management,” due, in particular, to “the absence of a dedicated structure to steer security issues.”