Louvre Heists Through History: When Art Crime Made Headlines

The recent brazen theft of eight priceless Napoleonic jewels from the Louvre has shocked the world, but the storied Parisian museum has weathered such storms before. In fact, the Louvre's history of high-profile heists reads like a thriller novel—complete with masked bandits, overnight hideaways, and one theft that accidentally created the world's most famous painting.

A Seven-Minute Heist in Broad Daylight

On a Sunday morning in October 2025, two thieves executed what French authorities are calling an audacious robbery. Using a truck-mounted furniture lift, they accessed the museum's second-floor Galerie d'Apollon—home to France's crown jewels—just thirty minutes after opening time. Within seven minutes, they had smashed display cases, grabbed eight items valued at over $102 million, and escaped on high-powered scooters toward a nearby highway.

Among the stolen treasures were jewels belonging to Emperor Napoleon III and his wife, Empress Eugénie. Her crown was later recovered nearby, damaged from being dropped during the thieves' frantic escape. French President Emmanuel Macron called the crime "an attack on a heritage that we cherish because it is our history."

Yet for those familiar with the Louvre's past, this wasn't entirely unprecedented. The museum's security vulnerabilities have been exploited repeatedly over its 230-year history as a public institution.

The Theft That Made the Mona Lisa Famous

On August 21, 1911, the Louvre experienced what would become the art world's most legendary heist. Vincenzo Peruggia, a 29-year-old Italian handyman who had briefly worked at the museum, donned his old uniform and hid in a storage closet overnight. When the museum was nearly empty the next morning—it was closed to the public on Mondays—he emerged, removed Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa from the wall, wrapped it in a white sheet, and simply walked out.

What's remarkable is that nobody noticed the painting's absence for 28 hours. Museum security was far less sophisticated then, and paintings were routinely removed for maintenance or photography. When a visiting artist finally raised the alarm, it triggered an international media frenzy.

"The Mona Lisa becomes this incredibly famous painting, literally overnight," writer and historian James Zug explained to NPR in 2011. Before the theft, it was merely one of da Vinci's lesser-known works, hanging among rows of other paintings in a hallway. The mystery surrounding its disappearance transformed it into a cultural phenomenon.

Police arrested several suspects during the investigation, including avant-garde poet Guillaume Apollinaire and a young Pablo Picasso. Both were eventually cleared, though Picasso was found to possess Iberian statue heads previously stolen from the Louvre—an embarrassing revelation that led him to return them hastily.

The painting remained hidden in Peruggia's one-bedroom Paris apartment for over two years. He finally attempted to sell it to a gallery in Florence in 1913, claiming he wanted to return it to its native Italy. The gallery owner immediately alerted authorities, and Peruggia was arrested in his hotel room. He served just eight months in prison for what many consider the greatest art theft of the 20th century.

A Pattern of Vulnerability

The decades following World War II saw a disturbing pattern of daytime thefts that exposed ongoing security weaknesses at the world's most visited museum.

The 1976 Sword of Charles X

In December 1976, three masked men used scaffolding to climb to the second floor—remarkably similar to the 2025 heist. They smashed through unbarred windows, clubbed two guards, and stole the diamond-studded sword of King Charles X from the Apollo Gallery. Despite triggering an automated alarm, they escaped the same way they entered. The sword has never been recovered.

The Vanishing Armor

Two pieces of 16th-century Renaissance armor—a breastplate and helmet gifted by the Rothschild family—disappeared one evening in May 1983. The mystery endured for nearly 40 years until 2021, when an appraiser recognized the pieces at an estate auction in Bordeaux. They were returned to the museum, though the circumstances of their theft remain unclear.

The 1990 Double Theft

In July 1990, thieves cut Pierre Auguste Renoir's Portrait of a Seated Woman from its frame in broad daylight. The theft prompted an inventory that revealed twelve pieces of ancient Roman jewelry had also been stolen at some point. Museum director Michel Laclotte declared a "crisis" and announced plans to increase the security budget by $1.8 million. Despite these measures, none of the stolen items have been recovered.

Why Jewels Are Different—and Harder to Recover

Art historian Noah Charney told Al Jazeera that the 2025 jewelry heist presents unique challenges compared to previous painting thefts. "A jewellery theft is a very different thing to consider because of the high intrinsic value of the object stolen," he explained. Paintings have primarily cultural value—they're made of canvas and pigment. But jewels retain enormous value even when broken down into component parts.

"With jewels, the cultural heritage value, which provides the majority of its value, is not something that the thieves are likely to take into consideration," Charney noted. The gems can be recut and sold without being identifiable, making them nearly impossible to trace on either legitimate or black markets.

Charney suggested that offering a reward higher than the component value might incentivize thieves to keep the pieces intact long enough for authorities to track them down. "Otherwise, I'm afraid there's not much hope that these will be recovered and they would likely have been cut down within hours of the theft."

A Museum Under Strain

The latest heist has reignited debates about security at a museum struggling with overcrowding, aging infrastructure, and climate-related challenges. In January 2025, Louvre president-director Laurence des Cars sent a leaked letter to France's culture minister outlining "increasing malfunctions in severely degraded spaces," "outdated technical equipment," and "alarming temperature fluctuations endangering the conservation of artworks."

That same month, President Macron announced renovation plans expected to cost up to $834 million over nearly a decade, including upgraded security systems and a dedicated room for the Mona Lisa. But museum staff say these improvements can't come soon enough. In June 2025, workers staged a spontaneous strike over "unmanageable crowds, chronic understaffing and what one union called 'untenable' working conditions."

Justice Minister Gérald Darmanin acknowledged the security failure bluntly: "What is certain is that we have failed, since people were able to park a furniture hoist in the middle of Paris, get people up it in several minutes to grab priceless jewels."

Lessons From History

The Louvre has weathered threats before. During World War II, museum director Jacques Jaujard secretly evacuated over 1,800 cases containing masterpieces—including the Mona Lisa—to the French countryside on the eve of Nazi occupation. This preemptive move prevented large-scale cultural loss when German forces marched into an essentially empty museum.

While Nazi forces did systematically loot tens of thousands of artworks from Jewish families during the occupation, many were eventually returned. The Louvre began displaying these recovered pieces in 2018, hoping to reunite them with the heirs of their original owners.

Today, the Mona Lisa sits behind thick bulletproof glass with a dedicated security guard—protection afforded to no other work in the museum. It's a testament to how Peruggia's theft transformed a relatively unknown painting into an irreplaceable cultural icon. As one writer noted, "There's nothing like a good old-fashioned museum heist to put some shine on your name."

The Road Ahead

As French authorities conduct an international manhunt for the 2025 thieves, the incident serves as a stark reminder that even the world's most famous museums remain vulnerable. The Louvre attracts 9 million visitors annually, each one a potential witness—or threat. Balancing public access with security remains an eternal challenge for institutions tasked with protecting humanity's shared cultural heritage.

Whether the stolen Napoleonic jewels will be recovered remains uncertain. But if history teaches us anything, it's that these thefts have a way of transforming both the objects stolen and the institutions from which they're taken. The Louvre has survived revolutionary upheaval, world wars, and repeated security breaches. It will undoubtedly survive this latest assault on its treasures—though perhaps with thicker glass and more vigilant guards watching the Apollo Gallery.