Thieves Steal French Crown Jewels from the Louvre in Minutes

On the morning of 19 October 2025, thieves carried out an audacious daylight robbery at the Louvre in Paris, targeting the historic Galerie d'Apollon just thirty minutes after the museum opened to the public. Disguised in yellow-and-orange high-visibility vests to pass as construction workers, two masked men used a truck-mounted furniture lift to reach a first-floor balcony facing the Seine river. Using a disc cutter, they sliced through a glass window to enter the exhibition hall, setting off internal alarms before confronting security guards with their power tools.

Inside the gallery, the intruders broke into two glass display cases and removed nine valuable items from the French Crown Jewels. Their rapid retreat took them back down the external lift to two accomplices waiting on motor scooters. During the scramble to escape, the robbers abandoned their vehicle, attempted to ignite the lift platform, and dropped two pieces in the street, including the heavily crushed Crown of Empress Eugénie. According to the Paris prosecutor, the entire operation took less than eight minutes.