Who pulled off the Louvre crown jewel heist?

There is definitely potential for a movie or web series on the daring robbery of Napoleonic crown jewels from the fabled Louvre Museum in Paris last Sunday. After all, heists remain an evergreen genre and this one has all the hallmarks of a riveting whodunit. More so as it was so, well, French. Stylish, well-structured, astonishingly simple—and obligingly conducted well within working hours so that not even the burglars had to use up their precious leisure time.    

So far, the French authorities say that the search is on for a “commando team” of four domestic robbers, though an international criminal gang has not been ruled out. After all, the French have a reputation to defend when it comes to jewel thieves: Arsène Lupin, the fictional French “gentleman burglar” created by Maurice Leblanc in 1905 and still reprised in films, TV and web series. It may be inconceivable for the French to consider some foreigners doing a Lupin.

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No wonder the French are equally incensed about the British media pointing to the so-called Pink Panther Gang as the culprits. That suspected band of real jewel thieves got the moniker after they hid a £500,000 diamond stolen from Graff jewellers in London in a jar of face cream in 2003. Actor David Niven playing the gentleman thief Sir Charles Lytton used a similar ploy to fool Peter Sellers as the bungling Inspector Clouseau in the 1963 film The Pink Panther.

Unlike the fictional Lupin and Lytton, though, the Pink Panther gang is said to have stolen over £400 million worth of jewels—albeit from stores in 35 countries rather than museums and also a £2 million diamond from a Chelsea art show in 2017. As the gang prefers to steal high value gems rather than art as they can be removed from settings and sold as stones, this theory has gained some traction in social media even if the actual investigators are tight-lipped on suspects.

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Particularly given the daring modus of the burglary. It was executed with military precision in broad daylight, relying on the element of surprise. Indeed, Lupin, Lytton and the Pink Panthers may well have decided on similar plans to gain entry: via a hoist mounted on a truck, as parts of the museum are under repairs anyway. Who would suspect men wearing high visibility vests, not black balaclavas? That too in a wing with inadequate CCTV coverage? Brilliant.

Even if it is not evident immediately, museum thefts are not rare. They seem to happen with remarkable regularity although jewels are not always the loot of choice for raiders. Security measures not commensurate with the value and lure of their artefacts are often the cause. That even the Louvre has such loopholes is evidence of how dangerous the situation actually is. The heist has prompted museums to assess their security processes, but lacunae will remain,

As all jewellery, including royal regalia, can be broken down into individual stones and metal and even recut to prevent detection before being sold, they are especially favoured by thieves. More so as their intrinsic value as gemstones remain unaffected by this ‘deconstruction’ unlike paintings or other artefacts. And as European royal families and aristocrats cornered most of the best gems since the 18th century, ‘crown jewels’ offer a bonanza in terms of cut and carat!

Interestingly, the last major theft of royal jewels from a European museum was in 2019 from The Green Vault at Dresden Castle in Germany. Some 100 items were purloined, including the 62-carat Dresden White Diamond, the diamond-crusted star of the Polish Order of the White Eagle, and a hat clasp, an epaulette and sword with scabbard all encrusted with diamonds. The value of the stolen items was said to €113 million. And the culprits were all of Arab descent.

In fact, one of the men caught for the Dresden heist was also linked to the 2017 burglary at Berlin’s Bode Museum in which the ‘Big Maple Leaf’ gold coin, weighing 100 kg and valued at $4.2 million, was swiped. The coin was never recovered but the perpetrators were caught, tried and sentenced in 2019. Notably, the men had entered the museum via a window, using a ladder. Is it a coincidence that the 2025 Louvre robbers gained access in much the same way?

Jewels with royal provenance displayed in European museums appear to be an increasingly “popular” target of burglars. In January 2025, robbers blasted their way into the Drents Museum in Assen, Netherlands and stole gold objects of the ancient Dacian civilisation, valued at approximately €6 million but actually priceless as they were regarded as part of Romania’s collective national heritage. They included the large Helmet of Coțofenești and three gold bracelets.

The Dutch police initially looked at the same Arab-German clan given as the artefacts were royal but finally arrested three locals from north Holland. However, now police have zeroed in on a Romanian who visited the museum before the theft. Interpol says the Romanian “regularly visited” the owner of two Italian restaurants in southern Germany who, Romanian authorities believe, is the coordinator of “a team of thieves who steal artworks on commission”.

Also, in October this year, Bronze Age gold jewellery was stolen from St Fagans National Museum of History in Cardiff in Wales, UK. The burglars broke into the museum after midnight and took just four minutes to smash and grab the gold artefacts including two large bracelets and a flat, crescent-shaped, collar-like necklace called a lunula from a glass display case before escaping. Two men were arrested but the 3,000-year-old jewels have not been recovered yet.

And just the year before in May, two thieves broke into the Ely Museum in Cambridgeshire, UK using a crowbar and purloined a Bronze Age gold torc—a twisted gold necklace—weighing 730 grams and a gold bracelet before getting away on e-scooters. These ancient artefacts, which were unearthed in the area in 2011 and acquired by Ely Museum, have not been found either and skyrocketing gold prices give rise to fears that they have been melted down and sold.

In 2018, two 17th-century crowns belonging to Sweden’s King Karl IX and Queen Kristina were stolen along with a royal orb, with the thieves escaping in a speedboat in broad daylight. The items were in alarmed displays at Strängnäs Cathedral, west of Stockholm but the robbers got in just before noon when it was open to visitors and smashed the glass cases for the objects. Eventually the crowns and orb were recovered from a garbage can in a town near Stockholm!

Not many know that the Irish crown jewels were stolen in 1907, never to be found again while the only attempt to steal the British crown jewels way back in 1671 was unsuccessful! Whether a latter-day Lupin, Lytton or the Pink Panther gang are behind this latest heist at the Louvre or some other criminal cohort—French or foreign—it is unlikely the Napoleonic jewels will be found obligingly dumped somewhere. The French need to dispel the legacy of Inspector Clouseau.

(The author is a freelance writer. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.)