It was "proffs" who on Sunday morning within the span of four minutes broke into the Louvre and got away with "priceless" jewelry from there, says France's Culture Minister Rachida Dati to the French channel TF1.
The masked perpetrators, according to the prosecutor four in number, used a cherry picker to get in from the side of the Louvre facing the Seine river. Equipped with an angle grinder, two of them are said to have made their way to the room where the jewels were kept via a freight elevator, writes AFP.
The perpetrators are then said to have fled on mopeds.
Crown found
The thieves got away with eight pieces of jewelry that the prosecutor Laure Beccuau for the TV channel BFMTV describes as "priceless and historical". The objects are said to have been taken from the so-called Apollo Gallery, which holds the majority of the French crown jewels that remain.
France's Ministry of Culture confirms that two of the objects are a necklace with emeralds and diamonds that Napoleon Bonaparte gave to his wife, Empress Marie Louise, and a diadem belonging to Empress Eugénie, wife of Napoleon III.
A ninth object was later found outside the museum. According to Le Parisien, it is the crown belonging to the aforementioned Eugénie. The crown, adorned with over 1,350 diamonds, was found just outside the walls and is said to be damaged.
Ariel Weil, mayor of central Paris, tells Le Parisien that he is stunned by the incident, which "will inevitably raise questions about security".
It has been like a movie script until now. It's hard to imagine that it seems to be so easy to break into the Louvre.
Museums vulnerable
Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez says that there is "a great vulnerability" in French museums. The Louvre announced that it would remain closed for the rest of the day "due to exceptional circumstances".
It was necessary to evacuate people, mainly to preserve tracks and clues so that investigators could work calmly, says Nuñez.
France's President Emmanuel Macron promises that the perpetrators will be caught and that the stolen objects will be returned.
"Everything is being done on all fronts to achieve this", he writes on X.
No one is said to have been physically injured in the incident. The prosecutor's office in Paris states that they have launched an investigation into organized theft, writes Le Parisien.
