Five days after the brazen theft of French crown jewels from the Louvre in Paris, the globe’s most visited museum, the world—far beyond art world circles—is still reeling over the incident. On the morning of Sunday, October 19, just moments after the museum opened, four masked thieves arrived at the rear of the building facing the Seine river armed with power tools and, using a mechanized ladder mounted on a truck, they broke into the Apollo Gallery on an upper floor. The gallery houses the Royal collection of gems and the Crown Diamonds.

“Two high-security display cases were targeted, and eight priceless heritage objects were stolen,” according to a statement from the Louvre. After the seven-minute heist, the two thieves who accessed the gallery, made their way back down the ladder—the escape was caught on a now widely distributed video clip—in their haste dropping two objects, including the  crown of Empress Eugénie which was recovered near the scene. They made off with jewels worth roughly €88 million ($102 million).

How could such an unthinkable theft happen? What are the takeaways from this shocking breach of security? Was it preventable and how can museums guard from it happening again? Below, some of the world’s top museum security and art loss and theft experts weigh in.

Crown of Empress Eugenie © RMN – Grand Palais (Louvre Museum). Photo: Stéphane Maréchalle.

Targeting the Museum Minutes After It Opened

“What really interested me from an investigative and museum security point is what time they chose to enter,” said Anthony Amore, director of security at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston.

The author of several books on art crime, most recently The Rembrandt Heist, Amore was struck by the thieves’ entry at 9.30 a.m., not long after the museum opened. “It tells me that it’s very deliberate,” he said. “They must know something about the way people move throughout the museum. It seems someone had inside information, whether they got that from a lot of observation or what.”

That the thieves would assume the gallery would not be packed was also surprising, he added. “They knew that it would be completely empty. So how do they know this?” he asked.

For Ronnie Walker, a former special agent with the FBI’s Art Crime Team for 20 years and recently a co-founder of non-profit Art Legacy Institute, the gang may also have made the best of the museum’s crowded conditions.

“If you’ve ever been in the Louvre, especially when it opens, it’s a madhouse. As thousands of people are storming in, all trying to get to the Mona Lisa, all eyes are looking forward. All security personnel are looking at the rush of people coming into the museum. They’re not looking behind them,” at the rear of the building facing the Seine, he said. “And that’s what happened here: the thieves came in the opposite direction of the rush of people, and doing so in the daytime allowed them to pull that equipment right up to the balcony.”

A ladder is seen with scientific police working beneath it at the Louvre Museum in Paris, on October 19, 2025. Photo: Remon Haazen / Getty Images.

Blending Into The Background

The Louvre’s perimeter further appeared to be vulnerable, with Amore pointing out that a truck that was “not scheduled to be there” was not questioned. In yet another strategic move, the thieves also donned work vests, a visual cue that suggested they might be museum workers.

Julian Radcliffe, founder of the Art Loss Register, emphasized the need for protective layer around such institutions: “You need to reinforce the outer perimeter of security.” This is all the more essential, he added, if a museum were undergoing renovation or other building work, when “there is a natural compromise of the security of the building.” Of note, the Louvre is embarking on a multimillion-dollar, six-year renovation project, dubbed Louvre – Nouvelle Renaissance, which includes creating a custom-built room to house the Mona Lisa.

“Scaffolding and barriers give more cover and more opportunity for people to undertake reconnaissance and to get close to the building in unexpected places,” he said. “If you look at the banks on Wall Street or in the City of London for example, when they have building work, they have a large number of guards patrolling around the building, night and day, to try to prevent this sort of thing from happening.”

Showcase of jewels of French sovereigns (1800–1850), Apollo Gallery © 2020 Musée du Louvre. Photo: Antoine Mongodin.

A Professional Hit?

“It seems that when the thieves came up in the ladder through the window, one of them made a beeline for the Napoleon case,” said Marion Fasel, a jewelry historian and founder of The Adventurine newsletter, who has authored 11 books on the subject. The gang targeting jewels associated with Napoleon III, she noted, suggested they knew exactly what to go for. “Empress Eugenie, of the Third Republic, who was married to Napoleon III was famous for her style. That was the first case they went went to,” Fasel explained.

The speed at which the burglars carried out the crime—which the Louvre termed “swift and brutal” in its statement—further indicated a high level of professionalism, said Radcliffe. “Whoever carried this out are the same people who’ve done similar operations,” he added. “Their M.O. is very daring, very fast, and well planned. They target very high-profile jewelry shops, galleries, fairs, or museums. They aren’t afraid of violence or taking on high-profile, high-risk areas.”

Display case of the jewels of Napoleon III (1852-1870), Apollo Gallery © 2020 Musée du Louvre. Photo: Antoine Mongodin.

Christopher Marinello, CEO and founder of Art Recovery International, and one of the world’s top experts on art theft, has observed how artifacts in European museums—in particular, gold—have increasingly become targets for professional gangs.

“Nobody wants to admit that Europe has a crime problem. It’s not fashionable to say that they’re hitting museums all over Europe over the last few months,” he said. “They’re focusing on items that can be easily disguised like gold.” He noted the theft of a Romanian gold helmet from the Drents Museum in Holland, the 2019 theft of Maurizio Cattelan’s gold toilet from the Blenheim Palace in the U.K, as well as Bronze Age gold pieces stolen from a museum in Wales.

“When gold hits $4,000 an ounce, the thieves are watching and figure, ‘Let’s just go shopping at Europe’s museums because they’re not very well-secured. This is just a real middle finger by these criminals to the museum community,” he said.

Marinello also thinks deterrents like prison sentences send mixed messages. Criminals “either get deported… or they don’t go to jail, or go to jail for a year or two or they get sentenced for the publicity,” before actually serving a far lighter sentence.

A security guard stands in front of the Pyramide du Louvre at the museum’s reopening on October 22, 2025, following the robbery. Photo: Thibaud Moritz / AFP via Getty Images.

Keeping Valuables In The Vault

Jewelry historian Fasel noted that when she visited the Louvre in 2021 she was struck by the fact that the jewels in the Apollo Gallery are displayed on an upper floor with natural light coming in through the windows. It is a stark contrast to the security measures in place for a 2021 gem show she worked on at the American Museum of Natural History in New York with vault-like storage conditions and some lenders sending their own personal security details to escort objects to the institution.

Marinello stressed: “What every museum that has jewels or gold needs to do, is treat it like cash because thats what it is. You don’t keep cash by a window. You don’t keep cash on the upper floors. You keep cash in a bank vault.”

However, he and other security experts we spoke with emphasized that they’re not trying to be overly critical of the Louvre, noting that alarms did go off and guards adhered to the top priority of escorting visitors safely out of the museum. In its statement, the Louvre has also highlighted further security measures it is rolling out as part of Louvre – Nouvelle Renaissance. The new “security master plan” includes new-generation surveillance cameras and perimeter detection.

“The criminals are watching this,” Marinello added. They’re watching the erosion of law enforcement and the lack of funding, and they’re taking a chance. It used to be that crime didn’t pay. Well, now, maybe it does. I’m hesitant to blame the Louvre. There’s a lot going on here.”