On Sunday, Oct. 19, 2025, a 7-minute heist right after the opening of the world-renowned Louvre art museum in Paris took place, vanishing eight items from the French crown jewels. While the museum has not come out with an official statement, local news agencies report that the robbers entered the museum using a mobile basket lift, breaking the first-floor window and stepping directly into the hall that housed their target, the Gallerie d’Apollon (Gallery of Apollo). Reactions from the French interior minister, Laurent Nuñez, and the President of France, Emmanuel Macron, came in the same day, with the former calling them pieces of “an inestimable heritage value” and the latter commenting on the theft being “an attack on a heritage that we cherish because it is our history.”

The items stolen include the reliquary brooch, diadem, large corsage-bow broach, and the 1855 crown of the Empress Eugénie, wife of Emperor Napoleon III. The crown was found near the scene of the robbery, either lost or discarded. Reports from the television station Télévision Française 1 and newspaper Le Parisien state that the piece, adorned with 1354 diamonds and 56 emeralds, was severely damaged, but has at least been recovered.

French art circles and law authorities are working in tandem to piece together the crime. In a statement from Forbes, the managing director of jewelry retailer 77 Diamonds, Tobias Kormind, suggests that the jewels will never be recovered, as they have most probably already been cut up into pieces to render the precious stones unrecognizable prior to their inevitable sale. CNN quotes recovery expert Arthur Brand, who calls the robbery a “national disaster” as the pieces represented the “natural pride of France.”

The crown jewels of France have a complicated history. Most of the jewels currently in possession of the Louvre are not as old as one might think: they date back to the 19th century and are part of a collection that Emperor Napoleon I started and his nephew, Emperor Napoleon III, completed. The ones preserved from the reign of King Louis XVI, “the Sun King,” have been targets of theft before, with one such attempt – for a diamond necklace – credited to Queen Marie Antoinette herself. Jewels from the pre-revolution period have largely been lost or sold, as the revolutionaries questioned their place in a French Republic. This remains a relevant question today, as many modern advocates believe the jewels are a reminder of an imperialist history that France should not pride itself on by publicly displaying them. Rather, the pieces should be sold and the profits reinvested in social welfare programs. Others remark that the jewels represent a heritage of a particular type of craftsmanship, and not the beliefs and actions of certain political figures.

Mixed reactions spread internationally through social media, with some users expressing concern about the Louvre’s lack of security and others humorously depicting the heist using various popular short-video format trends. The German manufacturer of the freight lift used for the robbery even managed to turn the situation into a marketing post for their products: the post reads “when something needs to be done quickly” and promotes the lifts as able to carry “your treasures” at swift speeds and “whisper quiet[ly].”

This robbery is not an isolated case. Since September 2025, at least three other successful thefts were carried out, one of them mere hours after the heist at the Louvre. The theft of the crown jewels, however, remains the most high-profile of those because of the Louvre’s reputation and the estimated worth of €88 million, of the stolen, “priceless” jewels, making them the most valuable among the stolen art items across the country.