This isn’t the Louvre’s first high-profile heist. Here’s a history of earlier thefts

The Louvre Museum in Paris is closed after masked thieves stole priceless jewels in what officers have described as a seven-minute heist in broad daylight.

Shortly after the museum opened on Sunday morning, two bandits used a carry on a truck to interrupt into its Galerie d’Apollon, which homes the French crown jewels and different treasures, via a second-floor window. That is in accordance with the Paris prosecutor’s workplace, which is on the lookout for 4 male suspects.

The thieves smashed show circumstances, stealing what a Louvre spokesperson described as eight gadgets of “inestimable cultural and historic worth.” They then fled towards a close-by freeway on high-powered scooters. Two items of jewellery — together with the crown of Empress Eugénie, the spouse of Napoleon III — had been discovered close to the museum afterward.

The heist offers an enormous blow to one of the fashionable museums on the planet, which homes beneficial works like Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa and has drawn some 9 million guests lately.

But it surely’s not a primary. Thieves have raided the Louvre a number of instances over the a long time — and as soon as managed to grab Mona Lisa herself proper off the wall.

A heist made the Mona Lisa well-known 

The Louvre was constructed within the twelfth century as a army fortress, and by the 14th century was used as a royal residence and artwork assortment heart.

The revolutionary authorities opened the Louvre as a public museum, the Musée Central des Arts, in 1793. It displayed artwork that had beforehand been held within the royal assortment, embodying the Enlightenment beliefs that had ignited the French Revolution 4 years earlier.

The Louvre now boasts some 35,000 works on everlasting show. And regardless of its fortified historical past, it has fallen sufferer to a number of high-profile safety breaches, together with the 1911 theft of the Mona Lisa.

On a Monday morning that August, Vincenzo Peruggia, an Italian handyman who had briefly labored on the Louvre, donned his previous uniform, walked into the museum and, when the coast was clear, took the portray proper off the wall. He slipped it out of its body in a close-by stairwell and carried it out of the constructing beneath his smock.

At the moment, the Mona Lisa was not extensively recognized exterior the artwork world. And since the museum was within the follow of briefly taking work off the partitions to {photograph} them, the Mona Lisa’s disappearance went unnoticed for a whopping 28 hours — at which level it shortly turned worldwide information.

“The Mona Lisa turns into this extremely well-known portray, actually in a single day,” author and historian James Zug advised NPR in 2011, a century later.

Actually, the heist acquired a lot consideration that Peruggia determined to not attempt to promote it and stashed it away within the false backside of a trunk as a substitute.

He did attempt to promote it greater than two years later, approaching an artwork supplier in Florence who instantly grew suspicious and alerted authorities. Peruggia finally pleaded responsible to stealing the portray — saying he wished to return it to its native Italy — and was sentenced to eight months in jail.

The heists did not cease there 

The Louvre and its works survived Nazi Germany’s occupation of France throughout World Struggle II, due to Jacques Jaujard, the director of France’s nationwide museums.

On the eve of the battle, Jaujard, with the assistance of workers and volunteers, secretly organized for the Mona Lisa and 1000’s of different masterpieces to be evacuated to the French countryside to guard them from looting.

However Nazi forces did systematically loot tens of 1000’s of works from Jewish households and rich collectors in the course of the battle. A lot of them had been returned to France via postwar authorities efforts, however haven’t been reclaimed. The Louvre started displaying them in 2018, as a part of a renewed push to reunite them with the heirs of their unique house owners.

The postwar interval noticed a string of daring daytime artwork thefts, as Nationwide Geographic stories.

In Could 1966, thieves stole 5 items of vintage gold and ruby jewellery from the airline cargo terminal at JFK Airport in New York Metropolis. The items had been on their approach again to the Louvre after being displayed on mortgage at a Virginia museum.

The New York Occasions reported that two months later, detectives discovered the jewellery in a grocery bag because it was being handed “from one man to 2 others in alternate for an envelope containing $2,900.” All three had been arrested.

A decade later, in December 1976, three masked males broke into the Louvre and stole what the New York Occasions described as “the priceless diamond-studded sword of King Charles X.” That theft bears placing similarities to Sunday’s occasions.

A museum spokesperson advised the paper on the time that the trio “climbed a steel scaffolding arrange by employees cleansing the facade of the previous palace and smashed unbarred home windows on the second flooring,” then smashed a show case to seize the sword. They clubbed two guards and “raced into the Apollo Corridor” — the identical gallery that was focused this weekend — however fled the best way they got here after triggering an automatic alarm.

The sword has by no means been recovered. The Occasions notes that it wasn’t the one merchandise stolen from the Louvre in 1976: That January, it says, “burglars made off with a portray of the Flemish faculty.”

Two items of Sixteenth-century Italian armor had been taken from the Louvre one night in Could 1983, a thriller that persevered for many years till the breastplate and helmet turned up at an property public sale in Bordeaux, France in early 2021. The items had been reinstalled within the museum that 12 months, however particulars about their disappearance stay scarce.

In July 1990, thieves reduce a small portray — Pierre Auguste Renoir’s Portrait of a Seated Lady — from its body and stole it in broad daylight from a third-floor gallery, in accordance with information stories on the time. That triggered a listing, which revealed {that a} dozen items of historical Roman jewellery had additionally been taken someday earlier than then.

And in Could 1998, a thief made off with a Nineteenth-century panorama by the French painter Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot. Based on information stories, after a guard found it lacking, officers shut down the museum for hours and police performed physique searches on a whole lot of tourists as they exited. The portray has by no means been discovered.

Why do these breaches preserve occurring?

Within the wake of the 1990 thefts, then-Louvre director Michel Laclotte declared a “disaster,” the Washington Submit reported on the time.

Laclotte mentioned the disaster could be used to extend museum safety measures, together with upping its safety funds by about $1.8 million and hiring a “super-specialist” to advocate coverage modifications.

However points like overcrowding, disrepair and local weather change have continued to plague the Louvre.

Tensions reached a boiling level this January, when Laurence des Automobiles, the Louvre’s president-director, despatched a letter to France’s tradition minister outlining problems with concern — which was leaked to the press.

They included “rising malfunctions in severely degraded areas,” “outdated technical tools,” and “alarming temperature fluctuations endangering the conservation of artworks,” in accordance with the French newspaper Le Parisien.

Later that month, French President Emmanuel Macron offered in depth renovation plans for the museum, that are anticipated to value as a lot as $834 million and take almost a decade to finish.

Amongst different modifications, the mission would set up a devoted room for the Mona Lisa, create a brand new “grand entrance” to alleviate congestion and improve the constructing’s safety system.

Louvre workers — together with gallery attendants, ticket brokers and safety personnel — say these upgrades cannot come quickly sufficient.

In June, the museum shut down for a part of a day after workers spontaneously went on strike to protest “unmanageable crowds, continual understaffing and what one union known as ‘untenable’ working circumstances,” the Related Press reported.

These vulnerabilities are high of thoughts within the wake of Sunday’s heist, as different cultural establishments tighten safety and French officers take the blame.

“What is definite is that we’ve failed, since folks had been in a position to park a furnishings hoist in the midst of Paris, get folks up it in a number of minutes to seize priceless jewels,” Justice Minister Gérald Darmanin advised France Inter radio on Monday.