A brazen robbery at the Louvre museum in Paris on Sunday – the most spectacular since the Mona Lisa was stolen last century – saw thieves make off with several items from the surviving French crown jewels.
A brazen daytime robbery at Paris’ Louvre museum on Sunday morning – the most spectacular since the Mona Lisa was stolen in 1911 – saw thieves make off with several items from the surviving French crown jewels.
At 9:30am, using a “monte-meuble” – a truck-mounted electric conveyor belt commonly used to move furniture in and out of Parisian apartment windows – the thieves rode up to a Louvre first floor balcony and cut their way inside using a battery-powered angle grinder.
Once inside the Galerie d’Apollon, they quickly smashed cases housing some of the priceless remaining French crown jewels, snatched eight precious items and exited the way they had come to awaiting scooters by the roadside.
In all, the robbery was over and done in seven minutes.
Louvre security now faces serious questions over how such an outrageous yet relatively simple heist could take place, especially when the museum was open.
