Louvre robbery leaves Paris

Paris- The Louvre will remain closed for the second day in a row on Monday, management told Agence France-Presse, after thieves stole the crown jewels from the Paris museum a day before.

“The museum is not open today,” a museum official told News.

A sign at the famous monument informed visitors that the museum remained closed due to “exceptional circumstances” and said that all visitors with tickets for that day would receive a refund.

“The museum will be closed throughout the day,” an employee informed visitors.

Shortly before the announcement, queues of impatient visitors made their way through the Louvre’s pyramidal courtyard and under the arches of the main entrance gallery.

Carol Fuchs, a tourist from the United States, had been waiting in line for more than 45 minutes.

“The audacity, entering through a window. I feel very sorry for whoever was guarding that room,” he told News after thieves escaped on Sunday with valuable jewelry from the museum’s Apollo gallery.

“Will they ever find them? I doubt it. I think they’re long gone,” he said.

The thieves carried out the brazen robbery on Sunday morning. They broke into the iconic monument using a crane-type lift to force open a window before smashing display cases and taking jewelery of “inestimable value”, according to France’s Interior Minister and the museum. They escaped on motorcycles or scooters, authorities said.

The robbery took place in the Louvre’s Galerie d’Apollon, a vaulted room that displays some of the french crown jewels beneath a ceiling painted by King Louis XIV’s court artist, the ministry said.

It all happened in broad daylight, with tourists inside the most visited museum in the world. No injuries were reported.

French Culture Minister Rachida Dati called the robbery the work of “professionals,” describing it on TF1 television as “a four-minute operation carried out without violence.”

News themezone correspondent Elizabeth Palmer says many French people have reacted with surprise at the ease with which such precious objects could be removed so quickly and seemingly easily from such a vaunted and secure institution.

He asked art historian David Chanteranne, who worked at the Louvre, whether the glass in the display cases containing the jewels had been strengthened in some way.

“Unbelievably it wasn’t,” he said, explaining that for the purposes of “historical accuracy,” the Louvre had used the original boxes to display the crown jewels, including glass from Napoleon’s time, two centuries ago.

In:

• Jewel
• Paris
• Museums
• France
• The Louvre
• Heist