The Louvre, the globe’s most frequented museum, will stay closed today due to extraordinary circumstances.
Published On 19 Oct 2025
In a swift and audacious operation lasting merely four minutes, armed intruders equipped with power tools targeted the renowned Louvre Museum in Paris, making off with invaluable jewels, according to official sources.
The incident occurred around 9:30 a.m. local time (07:30 GMT), shortly after the museum opened to visitors. The perpetrators gained access to the Galerie d’Apollon, the section housing France’s historic crown jewels, as confirmed by the Ministry of the Interior in a Sunday statement.
“An inquiry is underway, and authorities are compiling a comprehensive inventory of the stolen artifacts. These treasures hold immense cultural and historical significance beyond their monetary worth,” the statement emphasized, noting that no injuries were reported among visitors, museum personnel, or law enforcement.
Culture Minister Rachida Dati described the heist as remarkably rapid, highlighting that one of the pilfered items was recovered near the museum premises.
“Our response team arrived within minutes of receiving the alert. Frankly, the entire episode lasted just about four minutes – a testament to the professionalism of the criminals involved,” she remarked.
The Louvre, famed for masterpieces like Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa and recognized as the world’s most visited museum, announced via its social media platform X that it would remain closed for the day due to “exceptional reasons.”
Video footage captured outside the museum revealed scenes of disorder as police sealed off entrances and adjacent streets, leaving numerous bewildered tourists stranded outside the complex.
Interior Minister Laurent Nunez, speaking on France Inter radio, described the stolen jewels as “of incalculable worth” and labeled the event a “significant theft.”
He detailed that the assailants employed a basket lift to reach the museum’s windows, then used a disc cutter to slice through the glass and access the targeted gallery before fleeing on motorcycles.
According to the French newspaper Le Parisien, the thieves entered through the Seine-facing facade, currently undergoing renovation. The report indicated that nine items from the jewelry collection associated with Napoleon and Empress Eugenie were taken, with a damaged crown belonging to the Empress later discovered outside the museum.
The Louvre’s history includes notable thefts, such as the infamous 1911 disappearance of the Mona Lisa by a former employee, which was recovered two years later in Florence, Italy.
In 1983, two pieces of Renaissance armor were stolen from the museum and only resurfaced nearly 40 years afterward.
French museums have recently faced a spate of robberies.
Just last month, the Natural History Museum in Paris was burglarized, with thieves absconding with gold specimens valued at approximately 600,000 euros ($700,000). The culprits used an angle grinder and blowtorch to extract native gold, a naturally occurring alloy of gold and silver.
In a brazen daylight raid last November, four masked intruders broke into the Cognacq-Jay museum in Paris, smashing display cases with axes and baseball bats to steal snuffboxes and other precious artifacts, all while other visitors were present.
