Louvre jewel thieves escaped with 30 seconds to spare, Senate inquiry finds

Thieves who stole more than €88 million in crown jewels from Paris' Louvre Museum in October escaped with barely 30 seconds to spare, a French Senate inquiry said on Wednesday, as lawmakers detailed a cascade of security failures that allowed the gang to slip away in broad daylight.

The parliamentary probe, ordered after the embarrassing 19 October daylight heist, found that only one of two cameras covering the break-in point was functioning and that security staff lacked enough screens to monitor footage in real time.

When the alarm finally sounded, police were initially dispatched to the wrong location, investigators told senators.

"Give or take 30 seconds, guards or police could have intercepted them," Noël Corbin, head of the inquiry, told the Senate's culture committee.

The report also cited outdated equipment, unaddressed vulnerabilities flagged in earlier audits and poor coordination between the Louvre and its supervisory authorities.

It said the balcony used by the thieves had been identified years earlier as a weak point but never reinforced.

The findings increase pressure on Louvre director Laurence des Cars, who is due to be questioned by lawmakers next week.

All four suspected members of the motorbike-mounted crew have been arrested, but the missing jewels, valued at around €88 million, have not yet been recovered.

Staff strike

The comments to the Senate inquiry come just two days after Louvre workers voted on Monday to go on strike in protest over their working conditions, a ticket price hike for non-European visitors, and security weaknesses that led to the brazen theft of France's Crown Jewels.

In a letter announcing the strike action next Monday and addressed to France's Culture Minister Rachida Dati, the CGT, CFDT and Sud unions said that "visiting the Louvre has become a real obstacle course" for the millions of people who come to admire its vast collections of art and artefacts.

The museum, the world's most visited, is in "crisis," with insufficient resources and "increasingly deteriorated working conditions," said the unions' strike notice to Dati.

"The theft of 19 October 2025 highlighted shortcomings in priorities that had long been reported," the unions alleged.

The gang took less than eight minutes to force their way into the museum and leave, using a freight lift to reach one of the building’s windows, angle grinders to cut into jewellery display cases, and motorbikes to make their escape.

The haul has not been recovered and includes a diamond-and-emerald necklace Napoleon gave to Empress Marie-Louise, jewels tied to two 19th-century queens, and Empress Eugénie’s pearl-and-diamond tiara.

The upkeep of the museum's vast and historic buildings, which were once a palace for French royals, has also not kept pace with its success as one of France's leading attractions.