PARIS – Paris has launched a huge manhunt after audacious thieves carried out a jaw-dropping daylight heist on the Louvre, swiping nine of the museum’s most priceless treasures including a £100 million crown, in just seven minutes.
The gang of several ‘highly organised criminals’ arrived outside the world’s most visited museum at around 9.30am local time on Sunday while thousands of tourists enjoyed a day out at the attraction.
Masked and wielding angle grinders, the gang parked up their scooters outside the Apollo Gallery (Galerie d’Apollon), home to jewels belonging to Napoleon Bonaparte, his wife Josephine and a string of subsequent emperors and empresses.
They then extended a freight elevator, resembling a giant ladder, from the back of a flat-bed truck and propped it up against the wall of the gallery, which was opened by King Louis XIV in the 17th Century.
The targeted wing of the Louvre, on the River Seine side of the museum, was undergoing construction work when the gang struck. Employees had previously protested under-staffing at the museum in June.
After scurrying to the top of the ladder, they used an angle grinder to pierce through the museum’s external window, before climbing into the Salle 705 exhibition room.
In a whirlwind seven-minute heist, they prised open two display cases and crammed away nine pieces of the 23-item Napoleon and Josephine Bonaparte collection, Le Parisien reports.
The treasures included the Eugénie Crown, adorned with thousands of diamonds and emeralds and worn by Napoleon III’s empress consort Eugénie, which was later found tossed below a window of the Louvre and broken into pieces.
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