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At 9:30 a.m. Sunday, what appeared to be a crew of workers parked a truck with a ladder and a furniture lift next to the world’s busiest museum, the Louvre in Paris, according to reports. news reports. On any given day, around 30,000 people tour the national gallery to see some of the 35,000 artefacts on display in the former royal palace, which became a national museum after the French Revolution.
Two of the people dressed as workmen climbed the stairs to a second-floor balcony that led to the Galerie d’Apollon, where royal jewels from when Napoleon ruled the country are displayed, a the Reuters report says. The crew, including at least one wearing a yellow safety vest, used angle grinders to cut a window to gain access to the gallery and then, as visitors and museum employees looked on, smashed two display cases containing some of the country’s crown jewels, which French President Emmanuel Macron. in a statement called priceless. The thieves went back down the stairs and on the back of two motorbikes to make their escape seven minutes after parking the truck.
“It looks like a scene from a movie or a TV series,” Ariel Weil, the mayor of central Paris, said in a New York Times report to the robbery
“How can they climb into a window and take jewelry in the middle of the day?” Magali Cunel, a teacher near Lyon, said in a Guardian report. “It’s unbelievable that such a famous museum could have such glaring security gaps.”
The thieves didn’t have to spend much to pull off their heist. Angle grinders, which are ubiquitous in facilities management and construction, are available for only $25 at Home Depot. And the type of truck furniture lift used in the robbery, which is not commonly seen in the United States, where a different type of lift is usually used, can be rented by the hour for only 70 euros – about $82 – in France.
“It was clearly a team that had done some reconnaissance, it also had a lot of experience,” said French Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez. Wall Street Journal report.
At least five museum staff members were in or near the Apollo Gallery when the robbery occurred, and none of them tried to stop the robbers, who used angle grinders as weapons to keep people in the gallery at bay, according to the Times report. “Following the security protocol of the Louvre, [the staff] contacted the police, ‘prioritizing the protection of people,’” the Times said, citing a statement by Rachida Dati, the French culture minister.
Joseph Sanchez, a travel vlogger from Puerto Rico, was in the room showing the Mona Lisa when the theft occurred and thought the museum was on fire or under attack when security personnel began ushering people out, according to the Times report. Sanchez ran “through the halls of the museum and up the marble stairs with his family members,” the report said.
Museum security in France has been on the government’s radar screen all year, the Journal reports. In January, police gave Louvre management a list of security improvements as part of a revamp announced by Macron, but the report did not say how many of the improvements had been carried out.
“There [hasn’t been] A lot of interest in securing these big museums,” Dati said in the Journal report. “Museums have to adapt to new forms of crime.” The robbery follows other museum robberies in France, including one at the National Museum of Natural History in Paris and the Adrien Dubouché National Museum in the French city of Limoges. NPR reported.
The thieves took a royal sapphire necklace, a royal emerald necklace, earrings, a tiara and a sapphire necklace from the jewelery set of Queen Marie-Amélie and Queen Hortense, among other pieces from the museum, according to reports. At least one of the pieces had more than 1,000 diamonds.
Because of the fame of the pieces, thieves are unlikely to be able to sell them, but they could melt down the pieces and sell the diamonds and other gems and gold to merchants.
“Criminals targeted specific pieces for a collector or jewelry that could be broken up, melted down and resold,” the Journal report said.
Investigators are reviewing CCTV from the museum and the riverfront, inspecting the basket lift used to reach the gallery and interviewing staff at the site when the museum opened, AP reported.
