Thieves Steal Crown Jewels in 4 Minutes From Louvre Museum
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Thieves stole crown jewels from the Louvre Museum in 4 minutes, sparking discussion on museum security, the value of historical jewelry, and the potential motivations of the thieves.
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Compare also this robbery from 2019 in Dresden: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dresden_Green_Vault_burglary
(But maybe they were caught because they were careless afterwards? Selling stolen art is not risk free either)
You can’t fence these items because of how high-profile they are. You can melt them down and sell the gold, but you’d destroy a lot of the value by doing that. Because it’s such a high-profile target you know a lot of resources will be allocated to track you down. You’d think that there be much safer targets to rob that wouldn’t draw as much attention and would provide similar returns.
2) You could potentially sell it to someone overseas who doesn’t care. There are rumors of a Gardner Heist (Boston) painting hung up on MBS’ yacht
Raise ticket prices until you can afford more staff or don’t need more staff?
Your right ends where other's same rights begin and all that.
Nowadays, we still need to wait in line to get in the museum, as we always needed to, the only difference is that there's a panel that reads "online reservations" in front of the line, and that you get bounced if you don't have a reservation.
And there's the scheme which allows residents 52 museum entries per year for free: https://www.museusemonumentos.pt/pt/noticia-com/novo-regime-...
This is true for every national muséum in France and it is awesome !
For example see https://brusselssignal.eu/2024/12/ec-demands-end-to-portugal...
Some time ago Germans tried to tax foreign drivers on their roads, so they introduced toll, nominally for all, but also lowered the same amount another car-related tax that was paid only by Germans. EU bodies saw through the scheme just fine and now they're on hook for returning the toll money to anyone still keeping the invoice/receipt.
Of course this is against the interest of other countries, which is why they prevented that, but it wasn't unfair or discrimination.
Do both. Lottery tickets the day of. Advance-rate tickets at a premium price. Mix and match with a non-EU premium for both.
So how do they manage it?
There is ticket booking, which is done in advance or else there is a queue. Once in, you are just following the same walk as everyone else to see the dinosaurs - what else?!? After the dinosaurs have been seen people can tire themselves out seeing some of the rest of the museum, but most don't see a lot else and head for the gift shop before going home.
At the Louvre they have the slight problem that the hordes are there to see that one painting, the one that isn't exactly massive. Everyone knows exactly what it looks like before taking the pilgrimage. Really they should just get rid of it and put it in on a regional tour indefinitely, so as to share the tourist money elsewhere.
Slap a copyright on that post and DM me!
> It seems like such a waste for people to fawn over that one painting and pretty much ignore all the other masterpieces you can see there
I think you're making the rather large assumption that everyone is into art in the first place, and thus find it surprising that they would fail to appreciate everything other than the Mona Lisa.
In reality, I suspect a lot of folks just weren't going to go to the museum at all otherwise. They only go to see the Mona Lisa, not because they think it's a particularly magnificent piece of art, but simply because:
(a) they don't want to look silly saying they visited Paris but didn't see the most famous painting in the world there, and/or
(b) the whole world talks about it, and they naturally want to experience whatever it is, to maybe see what all the fuss is about.
Such reasons are pretty natural, and have nothing whatsoever to do with the intrinsic merits of -- or appreciation of -- the Mona Lisa relative to whatever else is there. It could've just been a hole in the wall, and if it had been the most famous thing in the world, it would've prompted a similar reaction.
My memories of the Mona Lisa is of a rather small paint behind dirty glasses with a large group of japanese tourists grouped in front of it and I simply didn't have the patience to wait and I just really glanced at it while passing by.
Also like most paints of its age, it is seriously damaged, colors aren't the original one and paint is cracked. I wish there was a way to actually enjoy in person those paints as they were when they were delivered to their customers.
My memories of the few times I've been to the Louvre are exactly the same as yours.
Musee d'Orsay down the river is a much better museum in my opinion and the one I never skip when I'm in Paris, the Louvre I'll only go to if someone I'm with has never been and really wants to.
The number of times a glare on the glass obscured the work, or I've walked through a room completely befuddled about what I'm looking at until finally on my way out discovering that I entered from the "wrong" direction and they intended that I take one very specific weird meandering path through the halls, and I get no info until the end of an exhibit otherwise, is ridiculous. On top of that, I feel like I get some history and analysis per artist or per period when what I really want is per work, explaining how they painted it, what they were thinking about or referring to (since art is almost always part of a conversation), and what's notable about that specific work. I'd also probably like fewer pieces from a given artist in a row and just have more a collection of contemporaries that drew inspiration from each other in a sequence so I can see how techniques and vocabularies developed, rather than "Here's the artist room. He was very famous and used a lot of color. We have access to these for a month, so take a good look."
It's weird just how much better science museums are at exhibit building. Please, art museums, crib their notes!
I also which a normal entry fee would allows you to comeback several times in a period. I don't have the stamina to contemplate 300 art pieces in a row. Can I watch 300 movies in the same day or can I even listen to 300 music records while giving them my full attention in a day? Nope.
It’s amazing how much fame sort circuits reasoning in the human mind.
In 10 years, bus full of tourists will go straight to the pyramid, then straight to the Da Vinci exhibit, take their goddamn selfie, and leave. The rest of the visitors will mostly enter through the historical entrances and never interact with those throngs of Mona Lisa lookie loos.
The Louvre is doing exactly what makes the most sense; they're not stupid, they're just not very fast, as is usual for a museum.
Then work on making everyone as wealthy as possible, by encouraging economic growth, so we have as much personal, individual wealth as possible, and so can buy as much of what we want or need as possible.
It seems to me that the "actual correct price" is the one that doesn't prevent everybody but the rich from being able to experience the art and cultural heritage.
There are many alternatives for dealing with crowds available. It's also just good business since those artistic works are a huge draw for tourists being outside money into Paris and into the country as well.
I think at the rebuilt cathedral, there's a plaque honoring the owners of Louis Vuitton, and I don't know who else...
Their size is probably big enough that any collector could distinguish them from any random jewels.
Who is there to sell to? The best bet is to store it away then let your great grandkids sell it to some Asian billionaire in the future when Europe and Europol no longer have any power and influence.
But also, once a thing is stolen, the market for forgeries of said object explodes. I also may have seen too many mysteries on television though.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c1kw8dwy4dro
Depending on what exactly is this you can find someone to refinish the stones and melt and precious metals. Possibly the stones are not recognizable anyways when taken off. Other than that I assume there is an underground market for these sorts of goods. These thieves seem sophisticated enough to have access to someone who will take this.
Sad.
> Recovery may prove difficult. “It’s unlikely these jewels will ever be seen again,” said Tobias Kormind, managing director of 77 Diamonds. “Professional crews often break down and re-cut large, recognizable stones to evade detection, effectively erasing their provenance.”
However, Sky News has an actual list. [1]
[1] https://news.sky.com/story/louvre-museum-in-paris-closed-aft...
Stolen and not retrieved
Stolen and found outside, broken [2] https://thefrenchjewelrypost.com/content/uploads/2016/09/san...[3] https://thefrenchjewelrypost.com/content/uploads/2016/09/san...
[4] https://thefrenchjewelrypost.com/content/uploads/2016/09/san...
EDIT: AP article appears to have been updated (at time of edit 8:25 PM GMT). Now lists items. Original comment was written ~7:00 PM GMT.
Oh, and about those marble sculptures, Great Britain...
Interesting that some anonymous downvoters on HN seem to side with criminals...
https://www.reddit.com/r/UKmonarchs/comments/1dcmb7i/fun_fac...
Are there really private collectors willing to risk everything for a piece they can never display or even reveal their possession of to anyone else? Have any collectors been caught doing this in the last 50 years?
Seems to strain credulity to me.
https://www.artrecovery.com/casestudies
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/jun/10/da-vinci-sa...
“Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. -Jesus Matthew 6:19-21
You could pursue your faith, and let others pursue theirs. That approach - liberty, fraternity, equality - has yielded wonderful results around the world. Maybe you would set an example for others that would inspire them to admire and consider your faith rather than suspect it as a threat, or for those who have suffered at its hands, hate it as an enemy.
the downvoted post above is low effort attempts to inject a race-religion controversy
there are plenty of breakdowns on how to do this, successfully, mathematically; e.g. https://arxiv.org/pdf/2306.12982
1) No one expects security in these places to be Hollywood grade lasers, knockout gas, explosive bolts shuttering down inch thick steel plates in an instant. But 7.5 minutes seems a tad long to have gone, per lack of reporting on anything at all about security guards, without being either opposed or confronted, or otherwise encountering obstacles to escape? (I've seen a story also say 4 minutes. The specific timeline might have been revised? Either that or they're deriving their metrics from different start/end points on what constituted beginning and ending the of the theft.
2) Also, this: “One of the jewelry items was found near the Louvre”. Careless that, someone isn't getting a bonus, but I'm not sure if that points either to ineptitude of non-professionals taking a rare opportunity, or professionals who simply had an unlucky fumble but were smart enough not to double back for it.
3) Finally: The market for these is, what, maybe 100 people in the world? That have the desire for this sort of loot, as-is? Because chopping them up and selling piecemeal is not an economically viable risk/reward calculation. Their value is their cohesion, at least as individual pieces and especially as a set. Otherwise, old jewels certainly have a lot of value but they're also not so rare in their individual pieces as to require this high profile of a burglary. So, specific buyers in mind and a commissioned theft I would think? Then again there have been some "dumb thieves" high profile thefts in the past so its not impossible. And it's not so nice a thought to think we're at the point in this world where billionaires are dispatching gangs of thieves in the old Hollywood tradition, instead of keeping their thefts of the more traditional
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/19/world/europe/louvre-heist...
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