On Oct. 19, on what started as a typical day in Paris, ended very unusually when the Galerie d’Apollon of the Louvre was robbed. The robbery occurred during regular operating hours and only lasted a couple of minutes.
The Breakdown
On Sunday morning, about thirty minutes after the Louvre opened, the thieves began their robbery. The thieves were dressed and disguised as workers. They entered on the south side of the building, with the help of a mechanical ladder attached to a truck. Two of the four robbers entered the building by climbing the ladder and smashing a hole into the window with power tools and drills. After drilling through the window, the thieves were in the Apollo Gallery within the Louvre. The Apollo Gallery is home to the majority of the Louvre’s royal gems, jewels and important paintings like the Mona Lisa. Two of the cases within the Apollo Gallery were sawn into. The robbers left four minutes after entering, bringing with them eight pieces from the chambers of the Apollo Gallery. They left down the same ladder and quickly fled the crime scene.
What Was Taken
The thieves successfully brought with them seven pieces from the Louvre. A diamond tiara and pearl baroche are two of the missing items. The tiara itself is made up of 212 pearls, 1,999 diamonds and 992 rose-cut stones. Next, a sapphire jewelry set was taken. The set consists of a necklace, a tiara and a single earring. An emerald necklace and earrings were also stolen. This set was gifted to Marie-Louise of Austria, Napoleon’s second wife. A diamond and gold brooch known as the “reliquary brooch” was also taken from the exhibit. Lastly, a royal crown was originally taken during the heist, but was dropped and left behind by the robbers.
Current Updates
While the city of Paris has hundreds of officers actively searching, the robbers have still not been identified. There are about 100 investigators working to look for the stolen jewels. Currently, people are worried that the thieves will melt the jewels down to sell, so officials are working as fast as they can to retrieve the missing jewels. While the Apollo room remains closed until investigators identify more clues in the case, the rest of the Louvre has reopened to the public. Since the robbery, Paris officials have come out and said that an estimated $102 million worth of jewels were stolen during the heist. Separate from the economic value, the pieces hold a lot of historic and sentimental value, especially to the citizens of France.
What do you think? Tweet us @VALLEYmag on Twitter!
whoah this blog is fantastic i love reading your posts. Keep up the good work! You know, many people are searching around for this info, you could aid them greatly.
Some genuinely interesting information, well written and generally user genial.
You have brought up a very fantastic details, thanks for the post.
I absolutely love your blog and find many of your post’s to be what precisely I’m looking for. Do you offer guest writers to write content for you? I wouldn’t mind writing a post or elaborating on a lot of the subjects you write concerning here. Again, awesome weblog!
I conceive you have remarked some very interesting details, thanks for the post.
Respect to article author, some great entropy.
Hi there every one, here every person is sharing such experience, therefore it’s pleasant to read this webpage, and I used to go to see this blog daily.
You completed several fine points there. I did a search on the topic and found mainly people will go along with with your blog.
I was wondering if you ever considered changing the page layout of your blog? Its very well written; I love what youve got to say. But maybe you could a little more in the way of content so people could connect with it better. Youve got an awful lot of text for only having one or two images. Maybe you could space it out better?
You have observed very interesting points! ps nice web site. “‘We’re always lucky,’ I said and like a fool I did not knock on wood.” by Ernest Hemingway.