Most of reopened to visitors on Wednesday morning, after several days closed following .
Only the Apollo Gallery, location of the theft and subject of ongoing police investigations, remained shut.
The reopening came just hours before the museum’s director was set to face questions from senators on how thieves made off with jewels of considerable historical signifiance and an estimated value of €88 million ($102 million).
The robbery renewed scrutiny of security measures at French museums, after two similar thefts in September at other sites, and unveiled years of shortfalls and neglect in security measures at the world’s most visited museum.
President Emmnauel Macron ordered a “speeding up” of security measures at the Louvre during a Cabinet ministers’ meeting on Wednesday, according to government spokeswoman Maude Bregeon.
Interior minister says investigation is ‘progressing’
Interior Minister Laurent Nunez told French media on Wednesday that the investigations were “progressing,” and that more than 100 investigators had been mobilized.
“I have full confidence, that’s for sure, that we will find the perpetrators,” Nunez said.
Whether the haul will ever be recovered, given the possibility of melting the gems down and selling them on, .
The thieves made off with eight pieces, including an emerald-and-diamond necklace that Napoleon I gave to his wife Empress Marie-Louise, and a diamond diadem that once belonged to the Empress Eugenie.
The thieves, thought to be an organized crime group, dropped a diamond-studded crown as they left via the ladder they had used to gain access to an exterior window of the Apollo Gallery.
Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau said on Tuesday that the financial loss was “extraordinary” but the greater damage was to France’s historical heritage.
Director des Cars in Senate, confirms she offered resignation after heist
As visitors queued outside the landmark glass pyramid on Wednesday, Louvre Director Laurence des Cars was preparing to appear before the Senate’s culture committee later in the afternoon.
The heist came just months after a staff strike at the facility and , with employees warning of understaffing and security shortfalls amid a sharp increase in visitor numbers.
Des Cars confirmed several of the security shortfalls reported since the heist, not least when it comes to what she described as “highly insufficient” CCTV camera monitoring.
“There are some perimeter cameras, but they are aging,” des Cars told the committee. “It clearly does not cover all the facades of the Louvre, and unfortunately, on the side of the Apollo Gallery, the only camera installedc is directed westward and therefore did not cover the balcony involved in the break-in.”
Des Cars — the first woman to run the Louvre, appointed in 2021 — also said that she had offered her resignation soon after the robbery, but had been asked to remain in her post, confirming prior reporting in newspaper le Figaro.
She told the committee of a plan in place to install “video surveillance covering all facades” as well as “fixed thermal cameras.”
Two other robberies at French cultural sites in September have also come into sharper focus amid this higher-profile crime.
The Louvre itself has been a rarer target for criminals in France, except for perhaps the most renowned art theft of all more than a century ago.
A former Louvre employee stole from the gallery in 1911, with this act helping propel the painting to its modern-day level of fame. He was caught trying to sell the Leonardo da Vinci painting in his native Italy in 1913 and it was returned to the Paris facility the following year.
Edited by: Jenipher Camino Gonzalez
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