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Masked thieves broke into the Louvre Museum in Paris on October 19, 2025, at around 9:30 a.m. local time.
They used tools such as an angle grinder, a blowtorch, and possibly a chainsaw to access display cases and steal priceless jewels, including objects such as Napoleon’s crown and native gold artifacts.
The robbery lasted about four minutes; the perpetrators entered through a window using a ladder mounted on a truck and escaped on motorcycles.
The museum was immediately closed to the public, and French authorities, including the Ministers of Culture and the Interior, confirmed the theft of objects of “inestimable heritage and historical value,” while the search for the thieves continues.
Ledauphine. This Sunday’s impressive robbery isn’t the first at the Louvre. Leonardo da Vinci’s famous painting was stolen in August 1911.
Before the jewels, there was the Mona Lisa… The Louvre was the victim of a spectacular robbery this Sunday. The museum lost several priceless jewels, and Empress Eugenie’s crown, found near the building, was smashed.
A robbery worthy of a movie, and not the first in the history of the most visited museum on the planet. On August 21, 1911, Italian glazier Vincenzo Peruggia stole the world’s most famous painting, the Mona Lisa, Leonardo da Vinci’s masterpiece.
Vincenzo Peruggia, a house painter and glazier, enters the museum on a Monday, the day it is closed. Dressed in his dressing gown, he goes unnoticed. She hides in the Louvre all night to steal the portrait of the Mona Lisa from the Salon Carré early that morning.
She heads to a stairwell to unframe the painting before hiding the Mona Lisa under her blouse, leaving the frame and glass behind. The next day, a painter sets out to draw the Mona Lisa… but it’s no longer where it should be. He raises the alarm, and guards search the museum for the painting.
Inspectors scoured the monument and discovered the painting’s frame and glass on the stairwell leading to the Visconti Courtyard. They took fingerprints and questioned all 257 employees. The theft made headlines in every newspaper, and even the director of the Louvre was forced to resign. An unusual event: the investigating judge in charge of the investigation imprisoned the poet Guillaume Apollinaire for a few days because his former secretary, Guy Piéret, had stolen statuettes in 1907 and 1911.
To recover the Mona Lisa, the Louvre Society is offering a reward of 25,000 francs to anyone who returns the painting. At the same time, L’Illustration is offering 40,000 francs to anyone who returns the famous portrait to the magazine’s offices.
For two years, Vincenzo Peruggia kept the painting in his apartment in the 10th arrondissement of the capital. The canvas was hidden in the false bottom of a suitcase. But in December 1913, Peruggia tried to sell it. The glazier-thief returned to his homeland to make an offer to Alfredo Geri, a Florentine antique dealer.
The thief then thought he would be honored for bringing this treasure back to his homeland. But the antique dealer Geri had the painting authenticated by the director of the Uffizi Gallery, a museum in Florence, before notifying the police. Vincenzo Peruggia was immediately arrested. At the trial, he claimed he wanted to return the Mona Lisa, painted by an Italian, to his home country. He was sentenced to one year in prison. Nevertheless, the Mona Lisa returned to the Louvre on January 4, 1914, and its security was tightened.
