In four minutes and in broad daylight, a team of jewel thieves broke into the Louvre Museum in Paris, smashed a few display cases, and made off with “priceless” Napoleonic jewels, AP reports. At 9:30 a.m., thieves rode a furniture elevator found outside the museum to the second floor, where they forced open a window, cut panes of glass with a disc cutter, and entered the Apollon Gallery, home of the crown diamonds, stealing an emerald-set diadem belonging to Napoleon III’s wife, Empress Eugénie, which contains more than 1,300 diamonds. The tiara was found broken outside the museum.
In total, eight items were taken, including a necklace and earring belonging to 19th-century French Queens Marie-Amélie and Hortense, as well as a necklace and earrings belonging to Napoleon’s second wife, Empress Marie-Louise. The heist occurred 30 minutes after the museum opened, with guests already crowding into the understaffed tourist hotspot, and only 270 yards from the Mona Lisa‘s smiling face. As the alarm blared from two smashed display cases, the thieves made off on motorbikes.
Two factors played into the robbery. The thieves took advantage of construction on the side of the Louvre facing the Seine River—work that required the very furniture elevator used in the theft. The other is a common problem found in workplaces throughout the world: Understaffing. According to AP, museum workers have routinely warned that there were not enough staff members on hand to deal with the Louvre’s crowds caused by mass tourism. In June, workers staged a walkout to call attention to overcrowding and understaffing that made much of the museum, particularly the parts under construction, vulnerable to theft. Several months later, the Louvre was the victim of one of the most audacious and high-profile robberies in recent memory. Experts told AP that it’s “unlikely” that the jewels, which have “inestimable” historic value, will ever be seen again.
