According to the French Interior Minister, Laurent Nuñez“four evildoers entered the Louvre Museum between 9:30 and 9:40 a.m. on Sunday, October 19. The Parisian museum opens to the public at 9:00 a.m. So the first visitors must have already been in room 711 on the first floor of the Denon wing of the Louvre, the The Mona Lisa.
It is a fact that ver The Mona Lisa Without being surrounded by a crowd it is a privilege. For this reason, among the first visitors to the museum there are always several people who quickly climb the stairs that lead from the lobby that covers the Glass Pyramid to the access control of the Denon wing on the -1 floor.
The most experienced ones take the K or L elevator right there, which goes up two floors to level 1 and opens its doors in the small distributor with a convenience store. souvenirs marked on the plans with the number 701. If you walk towards the sala 700 one finds one with ‘The Castaways of the Medusa’, by Géricault; ‘Death’, by Sardanapalus; and ‘Liberty leading the people’, by Delacroix.
On the contrary, if one goes to the sala 702 He stumbles upon David, the painter of the ‘Oath of the Horatii’ and the greatest painting of political propaganda, ‘The Coronation of Napoleon’. It is difficult to make the visitor’s eyes notice ‘The Great Odalisque’, by Ingres.
At that early hour it is possible that the museum guards will let someone go from hall 701 to the sala 711that of ‘La Gioconda’. The normal route is to cross the 702, saluting Napoleon just enough, admire from the balcony (703) the majestic ‘Victory of Samothrace’, cross the room of Boticelli’s frescoes (706) to quickly end up in the large gallery that allows access to the ‘La Gioconda’ room.
Just behind the 706 is the 705: the Apollo Gallery. Where were the stolen jewels. The thieves had arrived shortly before quai Mitterrand, the Seine quay that runs parallel to the Denon wing of the Louvre. There were four of them, two arrived in separate scooters Yamaha T-Max. The other two on board a truck with a lifting platform. They parked next to the fence of the museum’s exterior works and were careful to mark the truck with half a dozen cones.
According to the French Interior Minister, the four bandits were “experienced” and probably “foreigners.”
Map of the Louvre Museum, where each room is located.
They went up with the platform to the first floor balconythey broke the glass, jumped inside and with the help of the chainsaws they broke two of the “three armored display cases” (sic) that since the 2019 reform have brought together the French crown jewels. The three boxes are theoretically made of ultra-resistant glass and polished steel, whose clean lines are a design of Juan Felipe Alarcónarchitect and museographer of the Louvre.
It is not known if they despised the first, which contains the jewels of the Ancien Regime, with the 140 carat white diamond called ‘The Regent’. Or perhaps they lacked time because, according to witnesses, The guards in the neighboring rooms began to urgently evacuate to visitors who had heard “screams and strange noises,” according to testimonies collected on French public television.
Quickly, quickly the thieves took the contents of the other two display cases: that of the First Empire and the Restoration… and that of the Second Empire. It seems that the criminals wanted to set fire to the truck with lift. It is not known if they intended to erase their tracks or create alarm, but it is confirmed that they fled on the two scooters. In total, the operation lasted 7 minutes.
In the rush They lost the crown of Empress Eugenia de Montijo that the Police found next to the truck. There are 1,354 diamonds and 56 emeralds inserted in eight gold rings that end with a cross. Of all the kings of all the dynasties that have reigned in France, only two crowns remain: that of Louis XV and that of the Empress Eugenie.
Eugenia’s husband, Napoleon III He commissioned two crowns that were shown at the Universal Exhibition in Paris in 1855. Eugenia recovered hers when she was already in exile in 1875. She bequeathed it to Princess Marie Clotilde Napoleon, Countess of Witt. It was acquired at public auction in 1988 by the patron and philanthropist Roberto Polo who donated it to the Louvre.
Napoleon III’s crown was sold at the great jewel auction of 1887, organized by the French Third Republic to recover money for public finances. It took place… at the Louvre.