In plain sight
It took just eight minutes.
Thieves broke into the Louvre in broad daylight on Sunday and made off with jewelry said to be of “incalculable” worth, all while visitors and staff members were going about their business in one of the world’s most famous museums.
“The French people,” the country’s justice minister said, “feel as though they have been robbed.”
My colleagues have been reporting on the heist — how the thieves pulled it off, why they did it and what precedents there are for this kind of high-stakes burglary.
How they did it:
With a removal truck, a ladder and a disc cutter.
At 9:30 a.m. on Sunday, four men parked a truck behind the Louvre underneath the first-floor balcony windows of the Apollo Gallery. At 9:34 a.m., they climbed up an electric ladder from the back of the truck. (This truck-mounted ladder — a monte-meubles — is a pretty common sight on the streets of Paris, where it’s used to lift bulky furniture through apartment windows.)
To break into the gallery, they cut the glass with the disc cutter, setting off the security alarm. When confronted by guards, the thieves threatened them with the same tool. Louvre staff members then evacuated the museum.
With the clock ticking, the thieves smashed two display cases.
They grabbed nine precious objects, including a royal sapphire necklace, a royal emerald necklace and a diadem worn by Empress Eugénie, the wife of Napoleon III, France’s 19th-century ruler.
At 9:38 a.m. — eight minutes after their arrival — the thieves jumped on two high-powered scooters waiting for them outside and rode away.
Why they did it:
The thieves weren’t after art. They only stole jewelry — tiaras, earrings and necklaces — which experts say suggests they were really after the diamonds, jewels and precious metals that can be offloaded individually.
A tiara that once belonged to Queen Hortense, for example, contained 24 Ceylon sapphires and 1,083 diamonds. These stones could be sold and reset in new items, undetected. The gold could be melted down and sold, too.
In that sense, the Louvre heist wasn’t really an art crime. It was, as a former leader of the London police force’s art squad told one of our reporters, “commodity theft.”
Commodity thieves generally don’t worry about leaving some valuable pieces behind. The Louvre robbers tried to steal Empress Eugénie’s crown, which features eight gold eagles, 1,354 diamonds, 1,136 rose-cut diamonds and 56 emeralds. But they abandoned it in their haste to leave.
They also didn’t bother with high-profile and easily identifiable pieces, like the Regent and Sancy diamonds, which would have been tricky to sell, even broken up.
How often do big museums get robbed?
It happens — and more often than you may think.
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Louvre, 1911: On a summer day, Vincenzo Peruggia, a former worker at the Louvre, tucked the Mona Lisa beneath his coat and walked out with it. By the time the painting reappeared, after Peruggia tried to unload it in Italy, the Mona Lisa was no longer merely a portrait, but a legend.
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National Museum, Oslo, 1994: Like the robbers at the Louvre, two men climbed a ladder and broke a window to steal the nation’s best-known painting, “The Scream,” by Edvard Munch. It took them less than a minute, and they left behind a note: “A thousand thanks for your poor security.”
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Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, 2000: As fireworks lit up the night skies to welcome the new millennium, a thief — or perhaps multiple thieves — dropped through a skylight, filled the gallery with smoke, and left minutes later with Cézanne’s “View of Auvers-sur-Oise.” It has not surfaced since.
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Bode Museum, Berlin, 2017: Thieves stole a giant gold coin worth several million euros, rolling it out in a wheelbarrow.
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You’re done for today. See you tomorrow! — Katrin
Thanks to all the readers who wrote in about the recipe for pignoli cookies in Friday’s newsletter. Many of you took issue with our use of “pignoli” to refer to pine nuts, when the more common Italian word is “pinoli.”
Pignoli is a spelling widely used by Italian Americans, and it’s still seen in some parts of Italy. But in this case we could have used the more standard Italian spelling. Feel free to send us notes about language any time. It’s a favorite topic for our team.
We welcome your feedback. Send us your suggestions at [email protected].
Katrin Bennhold is the host of The World, the flagship global newsletter of The New York Times.
The post How the Louvre Thieves Did It appeared first on New York Times.
