Louvre museum robbery reminiscent of other high-profile heists: NPR

The Louvre museum in Paris is closed after masked thieves stole priceless jewels in what authorities described as a seven-minute heist in broad daylight.

Shortly after the museum opened Sunday morning, two bandits used a truck’s elevator to break into the Apollo Gallery, which houses the French crown jewels and other treasures, through a second-floor window. This is what the Paris prosecutor’s office says, which is looking for four male suspects.

The thieves destroyed display cases, stealing what a Louvre spokesperson described as eight objects of “priceless cultural and historical value”. They then fled to a nearby highway on high-powered scooters. Two jewels, including the crown of Empress Eugénie, wife of Napoleon III, were later found near the museum.

The heist is a major blow to one of the world’s most popular museums, which houses valuable works such as those by Leonardo da Vinci. Mona Lisa and has attracted some 9 million visitors in recent years.

But this is not a first. Thieves have broken into the Louvre several times over the decades – and once managed to take it over Mona Lisa herself right next to the wall.

A robbery took place Mona Lisa famous

The Louvre was built in the 12th century as a military fortress, and by the 14th century it was used as a royal residence and art collection center.

The revolutionary government opened the Louvre as a public museum, the Musée Central des Arts, in 1793. It displayed works of art that had previously been part of the royal collection, embodying the Enlightenment ideals that had sparked the French Revolution four years earlier.

The Louvre today has some 35,000 works on permanent display. And despite its fortified history, it has been the victim of multiple high-profile security breaches, including the theft of the Mona Lisa.

One Monday morning in August, Vincenzo Peruggia, an Italian handyman who had briefly worked at the Louvre, put on his old uniform, entered the museum and, when the coast was clear, removed the painting from the wall. He knocked her out of her frame into a nearby stairwell and carried her out of the building under her blouse.

At this time, the Mona Lisa was not well known outside the art world. And because the museum had a habit of briefly removing paintings from the walls to photograph them, the Mona Lisa‘s disappearance went unnoticed for 28 hours, after which it quickly became international news.

A reconstruction shows how Vincenzo Peruggia managed to steal the Mona Lisa on the walls of the Louvre in 1911.

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Roger Viollet/Getty Images

“THE Mona Lisa becomes this incredibly famous painting, literally overnight,” writer and historian James Zug told NPR in 2011, a century later.

In fact, the theft attracted so much attention that Peruggia decided not to try to sell it and hid it in the false bottom of a trunk.

He tried to sell it more than two years later, speaking to an art dealer in Florence who immediately became suspicious and alerted the authorities. Peruggia eventually pleaded guilty to stealing the painting – saying he wanted to return it to his native Italy – and was sentenced to eight months in prison.

The robberies didn’t stop there

The Louvre and its works survived the occupation of France by Nazi Germany during World War II, thanks to Jacques Jaujard, director of the national museums of France.

On the eve of the war, Jaujard, with the help of staff and volunteers, secretly organized the Mona Lisa and thousands of other masterpieces will be evacuated to the French countryside to protect them from pillage.

But Nazi forces systematically looted tens of thousands of works belonging to Jewish families and wealthy collectors during the war. Many of them were repatriated to France through the efforts of the post-war government, but were not recovered. The Louvre began exhibiting them in 2018, as part of a renewed desire to reunite them with the heirs of their original owners.

The post-war period was marked by a series of daring art thefts, such as National geographic reports.

In May 1966, thieves stole five pieces of antique gold and ruby ​​jewelry from the airline’s cargo terminal at New York’s JFK Airport. The pieces were on their way to the Louvre after being displayed on loan at a museum in Virginia.

THE New York Times reported that two months later, detectives found the jewelry in a grocery bag when it was passed “from one man to two others in exchange for an envelope containing $2,900.” All three were arrested.

Scaffolding at the Louvre in Paris, France, which three masked men used to gain access to the building and steal the sword of King Charles X in December 1976.

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Keystone/Getty Images/Keystone/Hulton Archives/Getty Images

A decade later, in December 1976, three masked men broke into the Louvre and stole what the New York Times described as “the priceless diamond-studded sword of King Charles This theft bears striking similarities to Sunday’s events.

A museum spokesperson told the newspaper at the time that the trio “climbed a metal scaffolding set up by workers cleaning the facade of the old palace and smashed the barless windows on the second floor”, then smashed a display case to take the sword. They bludgeoned two guards and “rushed towards Apollo Hall” – the same gallery that was targeted over the weekend – but fled after triggering an automated alarm.

The sword was never found. The times notes that this is not the only object stolen from the Louvre in 1976: in January of that year, it is said, “burglars seized a painting from the Flemish school”.

Two pieces of 16th-century Italian armor were removed from the Louvre one evening in May 1983, a mystery that persisted for decades until the breastplate and helmet were found at an auction in Bordeaux, France, in early 2021. The pieces were reinstalled in the museum that year, but details about their disappearance remain scarce.

In July 1990, thieves cut up a small painting: that of Pierre Auguste Renoir. Portrait of a seated woman – from its frame and stole it in broad daylight from a third-floor gallery, according to information at the time. This triggered an inventory which revealed that a dozen ancient Roman jewels had also been seized some time before.

And in May 1998, a thief stole a 19th-century landscape by French painter Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot. According to media reports, after a guard discovered her disappearance, authorities closed the museum for hours and police conducted body searches on hundreds of visitors as they exited. The painting has never been found.

Why do these violations continue to occur?

French police officers stand next to a furniture lift used by thieves to enter the Louvre on Sunday.

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Dimitar Dilkoff/AFP via Getty Images

Following the 1990 thefts, Michel Laclotte, then director of the Louvre, declared a “crisis.” Washington Post reported at the time.

Laclotte said the crisis would be used to strengthen the museum’s security measures, including increasing its security budget by about $1.8 million and hiring a “super-specialist” to recommend policy changes.

But problems such as overcrowding, disrepair and climate change continue to plague the Louvre.

Tensions reached a boiling point last January, when Laurence des Cars, president and director of the Louvre, sent a letter to the French culture minister outlining areas of concern – which was leaked to the press.

Among them, “increasing dysfunctions in very degraded spaces”, “outdated technical equipment” and “alarming temperature variations endangering the conservation of works of art”, according to the French newspaper. The Parisian.

Later that month, French President Emmanuel Macron outlined sweeping plans to renovate the museum, which are expected to cost up to $834 million and take nearly a decade.

Among other changes, the project would create a dedicated room for Mona Lisacreate a new “grand entrance” to relieve congestion and improve the building’s security system.

Louvre staff — including gallery attendants, ticket agents and security personnel — say these improvements can’t come soon enough.

In June, the museum closed its doors for part of the day after staff spontaneously went on strike to protest “unmanageable crowds, chronic understaffing and what one union called ‘untenable’ working conditions,” the Associated Press reported.

These vulnerabilities are at the forefront of concerns following Sunday’s heist, as other cultural institutions step up security and French officials take responsibility.

“What is certain is that we failed, since people were able to park a furniture lift in the middle of Paris, bring people up in a few minutes to seize priceless jewels,” Justice Minister Gérald Darmanin declared Monday on France Inter radio.