The Louvre Museum’s Apollo Gallery, where thieves carried out one of the most daring eight-minute museum heists in years, is back open to the public. But with a twist, as there is nothing left to steal now.
The Apollo Gallery welcomed visitors back on Wednesday, July 22, nine months after four masked thieves broke in and stole France’s crown jewels in broad daylight.
The museum has now removed everything from the room, even the empty display cases, leaving only the gilded ceilings, frescoes and the sculptural walls. The gallery has returned to its original form, just as it was three and a half centuries ago (in the 18th century). At the time, the gallery served as a ceremonial hall for Louis XIV, which he used to walk through and look up, not for cases filled with diamonds.
In an interview with Le Parisien, the president-director of the Louvre museum, Christophe Leribault, said that the jewels that survived will be transferred to a new vault somewhere in the museum and announced that they will not return to the Apollo gallery.
He described the new Jewels location as “windowless, secure, nothing like the setup that let four men in on scooters.”
On October 19 last year, thieves used a truck-mounted lift to reach a first-floor window, cut through the glass and were in and out with eight pieces in less than eight minutes.
Among what they took: a tiara that belonged to Empress Eugénie, wife of Napoleon III, along with jewelry linked to other French queens going back generations.
It all added up to somewhere around 88 million euros, or about $102 million.
Only one piece ever resurfaced. Eugénie’s crown was found outside the museum, apparently dropped by the thieves as they fled. Everything else is still missing, as are the men who took it.
