This is not the Louvre’s first high-profile heist. This is a historical past of earlier thefts

The Louvre Museum in Paris is closed after masked thieves stole priceless jewels in what officers have described as a seven-minute heist in broad daylight.

Shortly after the museum opened on Sunday morning, two bandits used a elevate on a truck to interrupt into its Galerie d’Apollon, which homes the French crown jewels and different treasures, by way of a second-floor window. That is in line with the Paris prosecutor’s workplace, which is in search of 4 male suspects.

The thieves smashed show circumstances, stealing what a Louvre spokesperson described as eight objects of “inestimable cultural and historical value.” They then fled towards a close-by freeway on high-powered scooters. Two items of knickknack — together with the crown of Empress Eugénie, the spouse of Napoleon III — have been discovered close to the museum afterward.

The heist offers an enormous blow to some of the fashionable museums on the earth, which homes helpful works like Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa and has drawn some 9 million guests in recent times.

Nevertheless it’s not a primary. Thieves have raided the Louvre a number of occasions over the a long time — and as soon as managed to grab Mona Lisa herself proper off the wall.

A heist made the Mona Lisa well-known 

The Louvre was constructed within the twelfth century as a navy fortress, and by the 14th century was used as a royal residence and artwork assortment middle.

The revolutionary authorities opened the Louvre as a public museum, the Musée Central des Arts, in 1793. It displayed artwork that had beforehand been held within the royal assortment, embodying the Enlightenment beliefs that had ignited the French Revolution 4 years earlier.

The Louvre now boasts some 35,000 works on everlasting show. And regardless of its fortified historical past, it has fallen sufferer to a number of high-profile safety breaches, together with the 1911 theft of the Mona Lisa.

On a Monday morning that August, Vincenzo Peruggia, an Italian handyman who had briefly labored on the Louvre, donned his outdated uniform, walked into the museum and, when the coast was clear, took the portray proper off the wall. He slipped it out of its body in a close-by stairwell and carried it out of the constructing beneath his smock.

Right now, the Mona Lisa was not broadly identified outdoors the artwork world. And since the museum was within the apply of briefly taking work off the partitions to {photograph} them, the Mona Lisa‘s disappearance went unnoticed for a whopping 28 hours — at which level it shortly grew to become worldwide information.

“The Mona Lisa becomes this incredibly famous painting, literally overnight,” author and historian James Zug instructed NPR in 2011, a century later.

In reality, the heist acquired a lot consideration that Peruggia determined to not attempt to promote it and stashed it away within the false backside of a trunk as a substitute.

He did attempt to promote it greater than two years later, approaching an artwork vendor in Florence who instantly grew suspicious and alerted authorities. Peruggia ultimately pleaded responsible to stealing the portray — saying he needed to return it to its native Italy — and was sentenced to eight months in jail.

The heists did not cease there 

The Louvre and its works survived Nazi Germany’s occupation of France throughout World Struggle II, because of Jacques Jaujard, the director of France’s nationwide museums.

On the eve of the battle, Jaujard, with the assistance of employees and volunteers, secretly organized for the Mona Lisa and 1000’s of different masterpieces to be evacuated to the French countryside to guard them from looting.

However Nazi forces did systematically loot tens of 1000’s of works from Jewish households and rich collectors through the battle. Lots of them have been returned to France by way of postwar authorities efforts, however haven’t been reclaimed. The Louvre started displaying them in 2018, as a part of a renewed push to reunite them with the heirs of their authentic house owners.

The postwar interval noticed a string of daring daytime artwork thefts, as Nationwide Geographic stories.

In Could 1966, thieves stole 5 items of vintage gold and ruby jewellery from the airline cargo terminal at JFK Airport in New York Metropolis. The items have been on their approach again to the Louvre after being displayed on mortgage at a Virginia museum.

The New York Occasions reported that two months later, detectives discovered the jewellery in a grocery bag because it was being handed “from one man to two others in exchange for an envelope containing $2,900.” All three have been arrested.

A decade later, in December 1976, three masked males broke into the Louvre and stole what the New York Occasions described as “the priceless diamond-studded sword of King Charles X.” That theft bears placing similarities to Sunday’s occasions.

A museum spokesperson instructed the paper on the time that the trio “climbed a metal scaffolding set up by workers cleaning the facade of the former palace and smashed unbarred windows on the second floor,” then smashed a show case to seize the sword. They clubbed two guards and “raced into the Apollo Hall” — the identical gallery that was focused this weekend — however fled the best way they got here after triggering an automatic alarm.

The sword has by no means been recovered. The Occasions notes that it wasn’t the one merchandise stolen from the Louvre in 1976: That January, it says, “burglars made off with a painting of the Flemish school.”

Two items of Sixteenth-century Italian armor have been taken from the Louvre one night in Could 1983, a thriller that continued for many years till the breastplate and helmet turned up at an property public sale in Bordeaux, France in early 2021. The items have been reinstalled within the museum that 12 months, however particulars about their disappearance stay scarce.

In July 1990, thieves minimize a small portray — Pierre Auguste Renoir’s Portrait of a Seated Lady — from its body and stole it in broad daylight from a third-floor gallery, in line with information stories on the time. That triggered an stock, which revealed {that a} dozen items of historical Roman jewellery had additionally been taken someday earlier than then.

And in Could 1998, a thief made off with a Nineteenth-century panorama by the French painter Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot. In accordance with information stories, after a guard found it lacking, officers shut down the museum for hours and police performed physique searches on a whole lot of tourists as they exited. The portray has by no means been discovered.

Why do these breaches hold occurring?

Within the wake of the 1990 thefts, then-Louvre director Michel Laclotte declared a “crisis,” the Washington Put up reported on the time.

Laclotte mentioned the disaster can be used to extend museum safety measures, together with upping its safety funds by about $1.8 million and hiring a “super-specialist” to suggest coverage modifications.

However points like overcrowding, disrepair and local weather change have continued to plague the Louvre.

Tensions reached a boiling level this January, when Laurence des Automobiles, the Louvre’s president-director, despatched a letter to France’s tradition minister outlining problems with concern — which was leaked to the press.

They included “increasing malfunctions in severely degraded spaces,” “outdated technical equipment,” and “alarming temperature fluctuations endangering the conservation of artworks,” in line with the French newspaper Le Parisien.

Later that month, French President Emmanuel Macron offered in depth renovation plans for the museum, that are anticipated to price as a lot as $834 million and take practically a decade to finish.

Amongst different modifications, the challenge would set up a devoted room for the Mona Lisa, create a brand new “grand entrance” to alleviate congestion and improve the constructing’s safety system.

Louvre employees — together with gallery attendants, ticket brokers and safety personnel — say these upgrades cannot come quickly sufficient.

In June, the museum shut down for a part of a day after employees spontaneously went on strike to protest “unmanageable crowds, chronic understaffing and what one union called ‘untenable’ working conditions,” the Related Press reported.

These vulnerabilities are prime of thoughts within the wake of Sunday’s heist, as different cultural establishments tighten safety and French officers take the blame.

“What is certain is that we have failed, since people were able to park a furniture hoist in the middle of Paris, get people up it in several minutes to grab priceless jewels,” Justice Minister Gérald Darmanin instructed France Inter radio on Monday.