Editor’s Note
In the wake of a high-profile jewel heist, the Louvre Museum has quietly retired its “Escape to the Louvre” slogan, reverting to the simpler “Musée du Louvre.” This subtle change speaks volumes about the institution’s immediate post-crisis messaging.
Four days after the spectacular burglary of eight jewels in the Galerie d’Apollon, the Louvre Museum has modified its welcome slogan.
The update did not go unnoticed. Four days after the spectacular burglary of eight jewels exhibited in the Galerie d’Apollon, the Louvre Museum has modified its welcome slogan. “Escape to the Louvre,” displayed since the beginning of 2021, has simply become… “Musée du Louvre.”
On Sunday, October 19, four criminals, two in a truck equipped with a lift and two on a powerful scooter, arrived in front of the museum at 9:30 a.m., at the Quai François Mitterrand. They secured the area with Lübeck cones, the orange construction barriers. The lift platform was deployed from the Quai François-Mitterrand, which runs along the Seine, towards the first-floor window of the Louvre, the world’s most famous and most visited museum. Two thieves broke a window using an angle grinder and entered the Galerie d’Apollon. Commissioned by Louis XIV to exalt his glory as the Sun King, this room houses the royal collection of gems and the Crown Diamonds, which includes about 800 pieces.
Inside, at 9:34 a.m., the Paris prosecutor’s office specifies, the burglars broke two display cases, again with an angle grinder. With their faces masked, the two men stole eight pieces, all from the 19th century.
In detail, these are: a diadem from the parure of Queen Marie-Amélie and Queen Hortense, a necklace from the sapphire parure of Queen Marie-Amélie and Queen Hortense, an earring from a pair of the sapphire parure of Queen Marie-Amélie and Queen Hortense, an emerald necklace from the parure of Marie-Louise, a pair of emerald earrings from the parure of Marie-Louise, a brooch known as a “reliquary brooch,” a diadem of Empress Eugénie, and a large corsage bow of Empress Eugénie (brooch). The head of the Louvre estimated on Wednesday that a restoration of the precious crown of Empress Eugénie, which the museum’s burglars dropped during their escape on Sunday, is “delicate” but “possible.”
Questioned by the Senate’s Cultural Affairs Committee on Wednesday, October 22, Laurence des Cars also acknowledged flaws in the external surveillance system of the great Parisian museum and proposed new measures including a police station within it.
including all its alarms, assured the director.
She admitted, however, that the video surveillance system outside the gigantic palace was “very insufficient,” mentioning a “weakness in perimeter protection”:
where the theft occurred,
she detailed.
