Watch: Louvre museum thieves' slow getaway with France's crown jewels; caught on camera

A video has emerged showing two thieves calmly escaping the Louvre Museum in Paris with an estimated €88 million (£76 million) worth of France’s crown jewels — in what is being described as one of the country’s most spectacular heists in decades.

The 36-second clip, verified by Le Parisien, shows two men dressed in black — one wearing a yellow hi-vis vest, the other a motorcycle helmet — descending on a furniture lift from the museum’s Apollo Gallery, where the jewels were displayed.

The video, apparently filmed from a nearby window, captures them leaving the scene on scooters parked along the Quai François Mitterrand, where a stolen truck with a 30-metre extendable ladder and basket lift had been stationed earlier.

“They are going to leave,” a voice, thought to be that of a security guard, is heard saying on a walkie-talkie. Moments later, another voice adds: “Damn, there we go — the police.”


Two members of a four-man gang broke into the gallery at 9.30 am on Sunday, shortly after the museum opened. They smashed an unsecured window and used disc cutters to open two display cases, seizing eight historic pieces, including an emerald and diamond necklace gifted by Napoleon I to Empress Marie Louise, and a diadem that once belonged to Empress Eugénie, wife of Napoleon III.

The heist, executed in under seven minutes, saw the men inside the gallery for just under four minutes.

France’s Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez said more than 100 investigators have been assigned to the case. Speaking before French senators, Louvre director Laurence des Cars called the theft a “terrible failure,” admitting that security camera coverage of the museum’s exterior walls was ‘highly insufficient’.