Thieves use a furniture elevator to steal Napoleon-era crown jewels from the Louvre in broad daylight
Oct 20, 2025
Key Points
- Four thieves stole eight pieces of Napoleon-era royal jewelry from the Louvre's Galerie d'Apollon in under seven minutes using a truck-mounted furniture elevator and angle grinders in broad daylight Sunday morning.
- The thieves exploited operational camouflage by posing as workers in high-visibility vests, nearly escaping with a diamond-encrusted crown worth tens of millions before dropping and damaging it during their motorcycle getaway.
- The stolen jewels are nearly impossible to liquidate through legitimate channels, leaving thieves dependent on hostile governments or wealthy collectors willing to hide the pieces for 150+ years before resale becomes feasible.
Summary
Four thieves used a truck-mounted furniture elevator to break into the Louvre's Galerie d'Apollon in broad daylight on Sunday around 9:30 a.m. and stole eight pieces of royal jewelry in under seven minutes. The operation relied on camouflage. The furniture elevator appeared to be legitimate equipment, and at least one perpetrator wore a high-visibility yellow vest. The thieves cut through a gilded gallery window on the second floor with angle grinders, took an emerald necklace and emerald earring that belonged to Empress Marie, and nearly escaped with the crown of Empress Eugénie, which held nearly 1,400 diamonds. They dropped the crown during escape and damaged it. The group fled on motorcycles and attempted to set fire to their truck, presumably to destroy fingerprints. No injuries were reported.
The theft continues a long pattern of high-profile art heists at French institutions. Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa was stolen from the Louvre in 1911 by an Italian carpenter and recovered two years later. In 2010, a thief known as Spider-Man took over $120 million in artworks from a Paris modern art museum, including works by Picasso and Matisse. He was later imprisoned and featured in a Netflix documentary.
The immediate problem facing the thieves is selling the stolen goods. Historic royal jewelry of this caliber cannot move through open auction or public markets without triggering international recovery efforts. Potential buyers number perhaps a hundred wealthy individuals worldwide willing to pay tens of millions to privately own the pieces. The most realistic paths are a buyer from a country hostile to France, who could display the items without fear of repatriation, or a family willing to hold the jewels in secret for 150 years or longer until public interest and living memory of the theft fade enough to allow resale without detection.