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Gleaming sapphires, emeralds and diamonds that once adorned FranceThe royal family may be gone forever, experts said Tuesday, after a brazen four-minute robbery in broad daylight left the nation stunned and the government struggling to explain a new debacle. louvre,
Each piece stolen – an emerald necklace and earrings, two tiaras, two brooches, a sapphire necklace and an earring – represents the pinnacle of 19th-century “haute joaillerie”, or fine jewellery. But for the royals they were more than just decoration. These pieces were political statements of France’s wealth, power, and cultural import. And they are so important that they were among the treasures saved from the government’s 1887 auction of most of the royal gems.
Laure Becu, the Paris The prosecutor whose office is leading the investigation said Tuesday that in monetary terms, the value of the stolen jewelry is estimated at $102 million (88 million euros), but noted that the estimate does not include historical value. About 100 investigators are now involved in the police search for the suspects and the gems, he said.
The theft of the crown jewels left French The government is again scrambling to explain the latest embarrassment at the Louvre, which suffers from overcrowding and outdated facilities. In 2024, activists threw a soup can at Monalisa. And in June, the museum was closed by its own striking employees, who complained about mass tourism. President Emmanuel Macron has announced that the Mona Lisa, stolen by a former museum employee in 1911 and recovered two years later, will get its own room under a major renovation.
Now the gleaming jewels, artifacts of long-ago French culture, are possibly being secretly dismantled and sold as individual pieces, which may or may not be recognizable as part of the French crown jewels, experts said.
“It is highly unlikely that these jewels will ever be recovered and seen again,” Tobias Kormind, managing director of 77 Diamonds, a leading European diamond jeweler, said in a statement. “If these gems were broken up and sold, they would, in fact, disappear from history and disappear from the world forever.”
The crown jewels are a symbol of heritage and national pride
At once intimate and public, the crown jewels are preserved as visual symbols of national identity from the Tower of London to the Imperial Palace in Tokyo.
In the case of the Louvre, the gems were stolen from the former palace’s gilded Apollo Gallery, a work of art presented in “the sun, gold and diamonds,” according to the museum’s website. Interior Minister Laurent Nunez said more than 60 police investigators were involved in the search for four robbery suspects. The thieves were divided into pairs, Nunez said, with two men riding on a cherry picker truck, which they used to climb onto the gallery. Photos show equipment ladders reaching from street level to the floor above.
There were eight pieces, officials said, which were part of a collection that originated as crown jewels in the 16th century when King Francis I ordered that they belong to the kingdom. The Paris prosecutor’s office, which is leading the investigation, said two men wearing bright yellow jackets entered the gallery at 9:34 a.m. – half an hour before opening time – and left the room at 9:38 a.m. before fleeing on two motorcycles.
The missing pieces include two crowns or diadems. One, given by Emperor Napoleon III to Empress Eugénie to celebrate her wedding in 1853, contains more than 200 pearls and about 2,000 diamonds. French officials said the other is a starry sapphire and diamond headpiece — and also a necklace and single earring — worn by others, including Queen Marie-Amélie.
Also stolen: Dozens of emeralds and a necklace worth more than 1,000 diamonds that had been a wedding gift Napoleon Bonaparte To his second wife, Marie-Louise of Austria, in 1810. Matching earrings were also stolen. French officials said the thieves also took a relic brooch and a large corset bow worn by Empress Eugenie – both pieces were set with diamonds.
The robbers dropped or left behind an enormous ninth piece that was damaged: a crown decorated with gold eagles, 1,354 diamonds and 56 emeralds, which had been worn by Empress Eugenie.
According to the Louvre, other objects in the Crown Jewel collection remained untouched, which included 23 gems before the robbery. For example, the remainder is the plum-shaped Regent, a white diamond that is said to be the largest diamond of its kind in Europe.
Now it’s a race against time
Authorities have not released any monetary value for the stolen jewelry. But they are worth several tens or even crores of rupees, even though they are too famous to be sold in the open market in their original condition. The emotional damage is deeply felt and easy to measure, with many describing France’s failure to secure its most precious objects as a blow to national pride.
“These are family mementos that have been taken from the French,” conservative lawmaker Maxime Michel said in parliament on Tuesday, questioning the government about security at the Louvre and other cultural sites.
“Empress Eugenie’s crown – stolen, then dropped and found broken in the gutter, has become a symbol of the decline of the nation that was so admired,” Mitchell said. “It is shameful for our country, which is unable to guarantee the safety of the world’s largest museum.”
The theft on Sunday was not the first Louvre robbery in recent years. But it stood out for its foresight, speed and almost cinematic quality as one of the highest profile museum thefts in living memory. In fact, this echoes the fictional theft from the Louvre of the royal crown by a “gentleman thief” in the French television show “Lupin” – which in turn is based on the 1905 series of stories.
According to a theft investigator, the romance of such thefts is mostly a product of showbiz. Art Recovery International attorney Christopher A. Marinello said he has never seen a “stealing-to-order” by an avid mystery collector.
“These criminals are looking to steal anything they can,” Marinello said. “They chose this room because it was close to a window. They chose these jewels because they thought they could break them, take out the settings, take the diamonds and sapphires and emeralds overseas to a shady dealer ready to cut them up again and no one would ever know what they did.”
What is happening now is a race against time for both the French authorities hunting the thieves and the criminals themselves, who will have difficulty finding buyers for all their pieces of royal glory.
“Nobody will touch these objects. They are too famous. It’s too hot. If you’re caught you’ll end up in jail,” aided Dutch art expert Arthur Brand. “You can’t sell them, you can’t leave them to your children.”
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Kelman reported from London. Associated Press writer Mike Corder contributed from The Hague, Netherlands.