Louvre Heist Has Cast France In 'Deplorable' Light, Says Government

Last Updated:October 20, 2025, 16:37 IST

Crown jewels tied to Empress Eugénie and Queen Marie-Amélie were stolen from the Louvre, prompting outrage from French officials and leaders.

French police officers stand next to a furniture elevator used by robbers to enter the Louvre Museum. (AFP)

A day after robbery at Paris’s Louvre museum, Justice Minister Gerard Darmanin has said that the incident has cast France in a “deplorable" light. The opposition leaders, meanwhile, have called the heist a national humiliation.

On Sunday at 9.30 am, barely half an hour after the day’s first tickets had been scanned, a small, highly organised group of intruders made its move, pulling off a swift, bold and irrevocably damaging robbery that would stun the world.

According to the Washington Post, the robbers arrived in broad daylight, entering the heavily guarded museum via a window of the ornate Galerie d’Apollon—the vaulted hall within the Louvre where France’s historic crown jewels are displayed.

Working with clockwork precision, they used a basket lift mounted on a truck, which France’s Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez described as the access device to reach the window from the building’s exterior. Then, they cut through the windowpane with a disc-cutter or small chainsaw and slipped inside the display area.

According to a minister’s estimate, the entire operation lasted “almost four minutes". Other sources pegged the heist to “around seven minutes".

The stolen haul consisted of at least eight or nine items from the French crown-jewels collection: tiaras, necklaces, earrings, brooches, many with connections to the Napoleonic era, such as pieces belonging to Empress Eugénie and Queen Marie-Amélie, Euronews reported.

The museum, which is home to artworks such as the Mona Lisa and which welcomed 8.7 million visitors in 2024, remained closed on Monday.

“Due to exceptional circumstances, the Louvre Museum will remain closed today. Visitors who had booked a tour for today will be refunded," its website said.

According to a report by Reuters, the Culture and Interior Ministries were holding an emergency meeting on Monday to discuss the security of the Louvre.

On Monday, the Justice minister told France Inter radio: “What is certain is that we failed."

He said the heist gave a “negative" and “deplorable" image of France. “The French people all feel like they’ve been robbed."

Though he emphasized that the robbers, who are still on the run, will be found, Jordan Bardella, leader of the far-right Rally party, in a post on X said that this heist “is an unbearable humiliation for our country. How far will the disintegration of the state go?"

Francois-Xavier Bellamy, of the conservative Republicans party, called it “a symptom of a country that cannot protect its heritage".

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