PARIS (AP) — Thieves reportedly stole nine pieces from the jewelry collection of Napoleon and the Empress at the Louvre,…
PARIS (AP) — Thieves have reportedly stolen nine pieces from the jewelry collection of Napoleon and the Empress at the Louvre, using a basket lift to reach the museum on Sunday morning.
The daring heist at the most visited museum in the world took place as tourists were in the Galerie d’Apollon, where some of the French Crown Jewels are on display.
The museum closed that day as police sealed the gates and ushered visitors out.
Here’s a look at some other famous heists worldwide:
The missing Mona Lisa from the Louvre helped boost the portrait’s fame
The Louvre has a long history of thefts and attempted robberies. The most famous one came in 1911, then the Mona Lisa disappeared from the frame, stolen by Vincenzo Peruggia, a former worker who hid in the museum and walked out with the painting under his coat.
It was recovered in Florence two years later – an episode that helped make Leonardo da Vinci’s portrait the most famous work of art in the world.
The robbery at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston remains unsolved
It has been called the largest art heist in American history, but 35 years later the theft of 13 works Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston remains unresolved.
In the early hours of March 18, 1990, two men disguised as Boston police officers entered the museum saying they were responding to a call. They overpowered two guards, tied them up with duct tape and spent 81 minutes stealing 13 works of art, including masterpieces by Rembrandt, Vermeer, Degas and Manet.
Authorities say the artwork may be worth half a billion dollars. Museum officials say it is invaluable because it cannot be replaced.
Some works, including Rembrandt’s ‘Storm on the Sea of Galilee’, were cut from their frames. Those frames hang empty in the museum to this day.
Two German museum burglaries yielded a solid gold coin and royal jewels
In 2017, burglars broke into the Bode Museum in Berlin stole a Canadian solid gold coin weighing 100 kilograms known as the ‘big maple leaf’.
The suspects are said to have destroyed a protective case and then managed to lift the coin from a museum window before fleeing with their loot in a wheelbarrow along the track. After getting away with it, authorities believe they later cut up the coin, worth about 3.75 million euros ($4.33 million), and sold the pieces.
Three men, including a museum guard, were later convicted.
Two years later, thieves smashed display cases Dresden’s green vaultone of the oldest museums in the world, and diamond-encrusted royal jewels worth hundreds of millions of euros were taken away.
Officials said they made off with three “priceless” sets of 18th-century jewelry that would be impossible to sell on the open market.
Part of the trek was later restored. Five men were convicted and a sixth was acquitted.
The golden toilet of an English palace was removed from the pipes
A thief that swept a golden toilet was sentenced from an English palace earlier this year along with an accomplice who helped cash in on the loot of the 18-carat work of art which was insured for almost 5 million pounds (more than $6 million).
Michael Jones had used the fully functioning, unique latrine while conducting reconnaissance at Blenheim Palace – the country house where British wartime leader Winston Churchill was born – the day before the theft, prosecutors said. He described the experience as ‘fantastic’.
He returned before dawn on September 14, 2019, along with at least two other men, armed with sledgehammers and crowbars. They smashed a window and pried the toilet from the pipes within five minutes, leaving behind a damaging flood as they escaped in stolen vehicles.
The satirical work, titled ‘America’ by Italian conceptual artist Maurizio Cattelan, poked fun at excessive wealth. He weighed just over 215 pounds (98 kilograms). The value of the gold at the time was 2.8 million ($3.6 million). The stolen jar was never recovered, but it is believed it was cut up and sold.
The piece had already appeared before on display at the Guggenheim Museum in New York. The museum had offered the job to US President Donald Trump during his first term after asking to borrow a Van Gogh painting.
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