The Louvre in Paris reopened on Wednesday for the first time since four thieves staged a brazen daylight robbery at the museum at the weekend, as the French authorities came under growing pressure to address security lapses at the famed cultural institution.
But the Apollo Gallery, a second-floor room of the museum that houses France’s crown jewels and that was targeted on Sunday, remained closed.
The thieves used an electric ladder and power tools to break into that gallery. They stole eight pieces of jewelry that are worth more than $100 million, according to the French authorities.
Over 100 investigators are racing to find the culprits, with some art crime experts warning that the thieves could break up the jewelry to sell the precious stones and metals on the black market.
The Louvre, a palace turned into a museum after the French Revolution, is a sprawling maze that exhibits over 30,000 of its 500,000 artworks in more than 400 rooms. It is the world’s most-visited museum. On Wednesday, visitors streamed in beneath the museum’s iconic glass pyramid.
“It’s my home,” said Carole Chevallier, 42, an artist who has been reproducing a work by Jacob van Ruisdael, a 17th-century Flemish painter, for the past few months. “I’ve been coming here for 15 or 20 years, ever since I was an art student.”
“I’m waiting to see how the museum will reposition itself in terms of security, whether there will be any disruption to work because of this,” she added, as she waited in line.
Laurence des Cars, the head of the Louvre, is expected to be grilled by French senators about the robbery at a hearing later on Wednesday. Ms. des Cars became the museum’s first woman president-director in 2021, when she was appointed by President Emmanuel Macron.
She has not publicly addressed the robbery, which has renewed questions about a lack of surveillance cameras, the functioning of its alarm systems and the strength of its glass display cases.
Ségolène Le Stradic contributed reporting.
Aurelien Breeden is a reporter for The Times in Paris, covering news from France.
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