The Louvre reopened to visitors on Wednesday, three days after a daring theft in which imperial jewels were stolen and France’s security reputation was damaged in seven minutes.
From 9am local time, the Paris museum’s usual opening hour, the public began entering the world’s most visited museum, although the Apollo Gallery, where Sunday's theft occurred, remains closed.
Last year, more than nine million people visited the Louvre, home to the Mona Lisa among its extensive hallways and galleries.
About 100 investigators are looking for the offenders, working on the theory that it was an organised crime group that clambered up a ladder on a lorry to break into the museum, then dropped a diamond-studded crown as they fled.
The stolen jewellery was valued at $102 million (€88 million), a French prosecutor said on Tuesday. They were not insured because the premiums would be so high that they would outweigh any benefit.
But Laure Beccuau said the greater loss was to France's historical heritage, and that the thieves would not pocket the full windfall if they had "the very bad idea of melting down these jewels".
They made off with eight pieces, including an emerald and diamond necklace that Napoleon I gave his wife Marie-Louise and a diadem dotted with nearly 2,000 diamonds that once belonged to the Empress Eugenie. The pieces were political statements of France's wealth, power and cultural import. They are so significant that they were among the treasures saved from the government's 1887 auction of royal jewels.
Ms Beccuau confirmed that four people were involved in Sunday's robbery and said authorities were analysing fingerprints found at the scene.
Detectives are scouring video camera footage from around the museum and on main motorways out of Paris for signs of the thieves, who escaped on scooters.
The theft reignited a row over the lack of security in French museums, after two other institutions were hit last month. Criminals broke into the Natural History Museum in Paris, making off with gold nuggets valued at more than $1.5 million. Thieves also stole two dishes and a vase, estimated at $7.6 million, from a museum in the central city of Limoges.
The Louvre’s director, Laurence des Cars, who has run the museum since 2021, has not made any public statement, but is set to appear before the French Senate's culture committee today.
A report by France's Court of Auditors covering 2019 to 2024 highlighted a "persistent" delay in security upgrades.
In January, Ms des Cars warned Culture Minister Rachida Dati of a "worrying level of obsolescence" at the museum, citing an urgent need for major renovations.
Ms Dati, who has faced calls to resign, said the security apparatus at the Louvre worked properly during the theft. “The Louvre museum’s security apparatus did not fail, that is a fact," she said in the National Assembly on Tuesday. "The Louvre museum’s security apparatus worked.”
The Culture Minister said she had launched an administrative inquiry in addition to the police investigation to ensure full transparency over what happened. She did not offer any details about how the thieves managed to carry out the theft given that cameras were working. But she described it as a painful blow for the nation.
The theft was “a wound for all of us", she said. "Why? Because the Louvre is far more than the world’s largest museum. It’s a showcase for our French culture and our shared patrimony.”
On Tuesday, the museum hit back at criticism that the display cases protecting the jewellery were fragile, saying they were installed in 2019 and "represented a considerable improvement in terms of security".
The theft of the jewels left the French government scrambling – again – to explain the latest embarrassment at the Louvre, which is plagued by overcrowding and outdated facilities.
Activists in 2024 threw a can of soup at the Mona Lisa. And in June, the museum was brought to a halt by its own striking staff, who complained about mass tourism.
President Emmanuel Macron has announced that the Mona Lisa, stolen by a former museum worker in 1911 and recovered two years later, will get its own room under a major renovation.
The stolen jewels are probably being dismantled and sold in a rush as individual pieces that may or may not be identifiable as part of the French crown jewels, experts said.
“It’s extremely unlikely these jewels will ever be retrieved and seen again," said Tobias Kormind, managing director of 77 Diamonds, a major European diamond jeweller. “If these gems are broken up and sold off, they will, in effect, vanish from history and be lost to the world forever."
