The thieves only needed seven minutes to break into one of the most famous museums and steal nine items worth over 100 Million dollars.
On Sunday, 19 October 2025, 4 thieves broke into the Louvre, the most famous museum in Paris, France at 9:30 in the morning, half an hour after the museum had already opened.
The thieves got up the wall of the museum with a truck mounted with a basket lift. Because of the suspects wearing yellow vests, civilians saw them but didn’t react since they assumed that they were construction workers.
The thieves then broke open a window on the second floor balcony with angle grinders and while two of them went inside, the other two waited on the basket lift, keeping watch. Threatening museum staff with their angle grinders, the otherwise unarmed thieves then took necklaces, tiaras and brooches from France’s now displayed royal families, officials said.
In total were nine jewels stolen. A 19th-century French queen’s set, including a sapphire tiara, a sapphire necklace and a single sapphire earring. An emerald necklace and matching emerald earrings, owned and worn by Empress Marie-Louise, Napoleon Bonaparte’s second wife. A tiara and a large bodie-knot brooch, worn by Empress Eugenie, the wife of Napoleon III and a reliquary brooch, all of them worth more than 113 million euros (128 million dollars).
All four of the thieves then escaped on Yamaha T-Max scooters and couldn’t yet be found.
This has a big impact on France since it is a big part of France’s history that got stolen. French President Emmanuel Macron described the theft as “an attack on a heritage that we cherish because it is our history”, saying that it is “an unbearable humiliation of our country”.
The leading Dutch art detective Arthur Brand told the Newspaper Sky News that the police “have a week” before the jewels vanish forever.
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