How thieves pulled off the Louvre jewel heist in minutes

It's my pleasure.

So, let's just start at the beginning.

What happened at the Louvre on Sunday?

So this is shocking and brazen.

It's a theft during broad daylight at the most visited museum in the world, in the center of Paris, the Louvre.

It's 9:30 in the morning and there are actually people in the Louvre at the time, visitors.

Thieves approach the museum on the riverside.

They use a mechanical ladder to gain access to a second floor balcony, and thus a window, leading into one of the most elaborate rooms in the entire Louvre.

It's a 17th century room known as the Gallery of Apollo.

This is one of the most ornate rooms in the Louvre, which was for a long time a royal palace before it was a museum.

And in the 17th century, there's a fire in the Louvre, and this room is basically remade, it's redecorated.

And the reason it's called the Gallery of Apollo is that they use mythological imagery from the story of Apollo to create a kind of metaphor for the king at the time, Louis XIV, th- the Sun King, and Apollo is the sun god.

Mm.

So the room is very ornate.

It's gilded from top to bottom, there are paintings on the walls, paintings in the ceilings.

So it's a- a prototype or an inspiration in a way of some very grand and maybe more famous spaces like the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles.

The thieves gain access to this very elaborate Gallery of Apollo, and then they have these specialized tools that let them get into the cases, um, where the jewels are displayed and they grab what they can carry.

Um, maybe as a sign of the haste, um, that they're under, they actually drop one of the key pieces which is a crown.

Um, that's been recovered though somewhat damaged.

It- it does seem that alarms go off but it's not clear where and who hears them.

In any case, they're not effective at deterring the theft.

There are people in the room and they're sort of shocked and they flee the room.

It was all very quick, it was over in a matter of minutes, and it seemed they were out the window and back at street level and on mopeds or- or street bikes with the jewels, dissolving into the Paris landscape quite quickly.

Do we know exactly what they made off with?

So it's a collection of jewels, tiaras, a crown, necklaces encrusted with diamonds and other precious stones.

It's my pleasure.

So, let's just start at the beginning.

What happened at the Louvre on Sunday?

So this is shocking and brazen.

It's a theft during broad daylight at the most visited museum in the world, in the center of Paris, the Louvre.

It's 9:30 in the morning and there are actually people in the Louvre at the time, visitors.

Thieves approach the museum on the riverside.

They use a mechanical ladder to gain access to a second floor balcony, and thus a window, leading into one of the most elaborate rooms in the entire Louvre.

It's a 17th century room known as the Gallery of Apollo.

This is one of the most ornate rooms in the Louvre, which was for a long time a royal palace before it was a museum.

And in the 17th century, there's a fire in the Louvre, and this room is basically remade, it's redecorated.

And the reason it's called the Gallery of Apollo is that they use mythological imagery from the story of Apollo to create a kind of metaphor for the king at the time, Louis XIV, th- the Sun King, and Apollo is the sun god.

Mm.

So the room is very ornate.

It's gilded from top to bottom, there are paintings on the walls, paintings in the ceilings.

So it's a- a prototype or an inspiration in a way of some very grand and maybe more famous spaces like the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles.

The thieves gain access to this very elaborate Gallery of Apollo, and then they have these specialized tools that let them get into the cases, um, where the jewels are displayed and they grab what they can carry.

Um, maybe as a sign of the haste, um, that they're under, they actually drop one of the key pieces which is a crown.

Um, that's been recovered though somewhat damaged.

It- it does seem that alarms go off but it's not clear where and who hears them.

In any case, they're not effective at deterring the theft.

There are people in the room and they're sort of shocked and they flee the room.

It was all very quick, it was over in a matter of minutes, and it seemed they were out the window and back at street level and on mopeds or- or street bikes with the jewels, dissolving into the Paris landscape quite quickly.

Do we know exactly what they made off with?

So it's a collection of jewels, tiaras, a crown, necklaces encrusted with diamonds and other precious stones.