As Louvre reels, a look at iconic museum heists

For the second time in more than a century, the Louvre has found itself at the centre of a brazen art theft. On Sunday morning, thieves reportedly made off with nine historic pieces from the jewellery collection of Napoleon and the Empress, using a basket lift to access the museum. Visitors inside the Galerie d’Apollon — where the French Crown Jewels are on display — were swiftly escorted out as police sealed the premises and closed the museum for the day.

Details continue to emerge, but the theft has already reignited public fascination with museum heists — those rare moments where high culture intersects with cinematic audacity. While Hollywood often makes art crime look elaborate or glamorous, real-world heists are typically fast, quiet and unsettlingly efficient. And yet, when the stolen object is loaded with heritage or symbolism rather than resale value, the mystery of why becomes far more compelling than how.

A museum with a history of vanishing treasures

This is not the first time the Louvre has faced the shock of an empty display. Its most infamous disappearance occurred in 1911, when Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa was stolen by Vincenzo Peruggia, a former museum employee who hid in a broom cupboard overnight. He simply lifted the small portrait off the wall and walked out with it under his coat. The painting resurfaced in Florence two years later — an incident that unexpectedly helped cement its cultural fame. Before its theft, Mona Lisa was respected; after it, she became a global icon.

Boston’s great unsolved mystery

Across the Atlantic, another museum continues to live with absence in a far more enduring way. The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston remains home to one of the world’s most baffling art mysteries: the 1990 heist in which two men disguised as police officers entered after hours, tied up security staff and spent 81 minutes removing 13 masterpieces from the walls.

The thieves escaped with works by Rembrandt, Vermeer, Degas and Manet — collectively valued at hundreds of millions of dollars. Empty frames still hang in the galleries today, a stark memorial to the theft’s unresolved legacy. Despite decades of investigation, none of the artworks have ever been recovered, and the case remains officially unsolved.

A pair of German heists that shocked the art world

Germany has also grappled with headlines of extraordinary museum burglaries in recent years. In 2017, thieves stole the 100-kilogram “Big Maple Leaf” from Berlin’s Bode Museum — a solid-gold Canadian coin valued at more than €3.7 million. Investigators believe the coin was cut apart and melted down soon after the theft. A museum security guard was among those later convicted.

Just two years later, another night-time raid targeted Dresden’s Green Vault, one of Europe’s oldest treasuries. Thieves smashed vitrines and fled with diamond-studded royal jewels from the 18th century, pieces considered too historically loaded to sell on the open market. While some of the jewellery was eventually recovered, the heist raised serious questions about museum vulnerability in the era of high-speed smash-and-grab tactics.

A golden toilet that flushed itself out of history

Not all stolen objects are classical or centuries old. In 2019, Blenheim Palace — the birthplace of Winston Churchill — was the site of a particularly unusual theft: the disappearance of a fully functioning 18-carat gold toilet titled America, created by Italian conceptual artist Maurizio Cattelan. The installation was part artwork, part commentary on excess. Thieves wrenched it from its plumbing within minutes, leaving behind water damage but no artefact; like the Berlin coin, it is believed to have been broken down and sold off.

As the Louvre braces for another high-profile investigation, the theft underscores a paradox museums continue to face: they exist to preserve and exhibit cultural treasures, yet those same treasures are often irresistible targets for the bold, the desperate and the opportunistic. Whether this latest robbery joins the list of recovered works or remains another unanswered mystery is now a matter of time — and tenacity.

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