An Unsolicited Analysis of the Louvre Heist

In the late Sixteenth Century, King Henry IV wanted space at the Louvre to flaunt his sweet art collection. Got it, his builders said, and they added a long second-story hall atop the Petite Galerie wing. In 1661, a fire destroyed that gallery, as some fires do. By then, Louis XIV was in charge. Louis had the hall rebuilt to hype his Sun King persona. The lavish hall, dubbed the Galerie d'Apollon, included a grand balcony overlooking the Seine so that royal-type things could happen out there. It was below this balcony where, on Sunday, October 19^th, 2025, at 0930 local time, four guys parked a basket lift.

Seven minutes later, the guys made off with an estimated €88 million chunk of the French Crown Jewels. It could've been more, but mistakes were made.

THE SET-UP

A few days earlier, a few guys arrived at an equipment rental company north of Paris. Their construction gig required a basket lift, or so they said. Très bien, the rental company said, but this being France, the guys had to come by for training and paperwork. The crew jacked the lift right off the lot.

Only two guys rode up that lift and went inside the Louvre. By all reports, they knew what they were after, and they carried what was required. No guns were spotted throughout the crime. Rifles would've slowed them down, and there wasn't going to be a gunfight.

It bears repeating that this was the Louvre. That Louvre, the one that 8.7 million people visited in 2024, more than any other museum. On October 19^th, the Louvre opened at its standard 09h00. Thousands of people streamed inside. Outside, thousands more gawked and wandered. Cars and tour buses rumbled past. Down on the Seine, cruising bateaux would have phone cameras trained on the palace. Being this famous– this observed– lent the Louvre a sense of untouchability.

Which proved a vulnerability. 

THE BUDGET

The Louvre isn't just the most visited museum on Earth. It's also the world's largest museum. The Denon Wing, which includes the Galerie d'Apollon, runs along the river for over a half-kilometre. In all, the Louvre has hundreds of rooms with thousands of entry points to secure.

And the Louvre was already old when Henry IV sought his art collection flex. Today, repairs and refurbishments are never-ending. The Denon Wing façade, for example. Its slow restoration inured any onlookers to what was definitely not two construction guys rising toward that Galerie d'Apollon balcony.

The Louvre was on notice. Forget 1911's theft of the Mona Lisa. In September 2025 alone, robberies hit the Adrien Dubouche Museum in Limoges and Paris' National History Museum. The thing is, security upgrades aren't simple installations when the palace itself is part of the display. The rooms must be retrofitted, and upgrades can't impede visitor flow or buzzkill the palatial vibe. 

Audits showed that the Louvre's security had fallen behind and estimated the price tag to catch up at €800 million. You know, public audits. The shortfalls extended to operating budgets. The Louvre had trimmed security staff to balance the books. Rightly, those guards raised a stink about fewer staff watching mounting crowds. You know, a public stink.

A museum's risk calculus hinges on the bad guy's reality: Art theft doesn't pay. This kind of job costs seed money. If it comes off, and if the manhunt can be eluded, and if the pieces aren't ruined in the process, no viable market exists for one-of-a-kind paintings or sculptures. The only options are to offload the haul for a pittance--with deep, survival-based reasons to suspect any potential buyers--or ransom back the haul. 

The calculus flaw: The Louvre has more than art on display. 

THE LOOT

If you've been an imperial player nation long enough, you've banked coin on trade and accumulated your share of plunder. You've dug up prehistoric artifacts and developed ceremonial accoutrements. Such is France. Housed in the Galerie d'Apollon are Charlemagne's sword, blinged-out crowns, and some of the world's most famous mega-diamonds.

Now, you can't sell a 56-karat renowned diamond any easier than you could the Venus de Milo. But diamonds can be cut. Gold is quickly melted. The result is fast, untraceable currency.

THE STRATEGY

Sunday morning. Traffic is lighter. The world moves a little slower. Less of a museum crowd to complain, probably less security. The timing's brilliance is its understanding, thirty minutes after opening, where that crowd would be. The Louvre is sprawling. It takes a while to check a bag, to ooh and aah, to decide where to start. At 0930, the crowd is still clustered near the entrance. Security clusters accordingly. 

At 0934, the two guys used a disc cutter to defeat the Galerie window glass. An alarm sounded. Security on duty radioed in about the intrusion. Security retreated, correctly, when the guys flashed power tools. Museum security's priority is crowd safety, and this job started out looking like a terrorist attack. While the Louvre moved into evacuation mode, the guys had a free shot. 

THE MISTAKES

Early accounts of the heist were clouded in shock value. These guys had outdone a movie plot, so they must've been a real-life Ocean's Eleven. Brash opportunists, yes. Brilliant in their boldness, yes. Consummate professionals? Consider what went wrong.

Mistake 1: Thinking narrowly.

The guys weren't looking for large objects, so in the interest of speed, they cut small holes in the display glass, so small that they struggled to reach in and grab their targets. They scraped up Empress Eugénie's crown while wriggling it through the tight opening. The crown, it should be mentioned, contains a reputed 1,354 diamonds and 56 emeralds.

Again, this was the Louvre and the French Crown Jewels. There wouldn't be just a little heat after this job. You can't just lie low. Every asset the French had or any favor they could call in would be deployed out of national pride. Out of political imperative. In retrospect, big thinking by one lens is myopic by another.

Mistake 2: Taking too long. 

Seven minutes. Three inside the Galerie. In jewel heist terms, this is an eternity's eternity. The guys must've understood they had a longer time window with the Louvre's scale. The guys put those extra minutes to use. 

This failed to account for other moving parts. Security knew exactly where the guys entered. While the guys were cutting display cases, guards outside rallied toward the basket lift.

Mistake 3: Dropping stuff. 

Eugénie's crown hadn't suffered its last indignity. By when the guys rode back down, a situation was already developing on Quai du Louvre. In their haste to clean up and bug out, the crown fell onto the street, bedazzled jewelry and all. It lay damaged and abandoned for hours.

Mistake 4: Failing to torch the basket lift. 

What the hell to do with a stolen basket lift was always going to be troublesome. The guys couldn't hightail out anywhere in that thing. By then, this was the most recognizable truck in France. The solution? The guys poured accelerant on the truck and tried to torch it along with their discarded equipment.

Too late. Security was already engaged. Guards stopped the fire while the guys sped off with the eight pieces they hadn't dropped.

This is 2025. Closed-circuit TV is everywhere. Smartphone clips, traffic cameras. Recreating the approach and escape routes would be simple enough. And there is always trace evidence. French authorities found beaucoup at the scene for their forensics gurus, over 150 samples and even more in physical evidence, headgear, cutting tools, the works.

The French have been canny about how much they knew and how quickly. But they knew a lot quickly, enough to arrest suspects as they tried to flee the country.

THE CRIME OF THE CENTURIES

The stolen jewels haven't been recovered. It's a fair wager that the cutting started quickly. If the French do recover anything, that feels almost accidental at this point, another mistake in a crime born and unraveled from mistakes. 

No matter how this ends, a few things will remain clear. Fortune favors the bold, but history tends to even the score.