I made it. I won at internet life. After a grueling quest to teach people with one foot in the virtual world about the weird stuff happening in France, I leaned back in my leather chair one day and thought to myself, Victory.

Here I stand, at the apex of my life, muscles glistening under a bright sun as adoring fans poor champagne over my Apollonian body and rub caviar on my back. I merely need to be careful not to let Quentin Tarantino anywhere near my feet.

Alas, a dark cloud forms at the back of my mind, two anomalies conspiring to pull me out of Nirvana. First, the fact that I'm currently in Germany, meaning you need to replace the champagne with beer and the caviar with a plate of sausage and sauerkraut (take a minute to imagine the picture, I am very fond of it).

Second, the curse of any good superhero has befallen me.

Something terrible has happened, and I cannot rest idle in my man-cave (the smelly and poor person's bat-cave) as evil dwells in my sweet little France. With a weary hand, I don my cloak once more and step out into the night. The first step is shaky, unsure, but with each leap, each jump from skyscraper to skyscraper, I feel the youth coursing through my veins, reinvigorating my muscles and bones, cloaking my body in warmth and strength. The French knight rises.

As for that terrible thing? My word, it is truly catastrophic.

On the 19th October 2025, a group of robbers enter the Louvre through a window with the help of a truck with a lift. The truck is of a German brand.

Minutes later, they are gone, taking with them jewels from the French Crown. The Germans would like their truck back.

We French have been wounded in our very soul, the fabric that binds us together as a nation, a fabric made of pastries and senseless hate for the fiendish denizens of the perfidious Albion (also called England) has been ripped open. At least, according to politicians and history nerds hosting a television show. I suspect that on a scale from "0" to "I really couldn't give less of a damn," most French people would rate themselves pretty high. In 2019 they had the Notre Dame cathedral burn down and be rebuilt, and an ex-president was sentenced to prison on the 25th of September of this year. The citizens' emotional capabilities are somewhat low at the moment.

And worst of it all, during the theft, the crown of Empress Eugénie fell to the ground and was damaged. The ghost of Eugénie, sweet child of divine France, has been disturbed, and it is up to you and me to put her to rest. We are all scions of the greatest heroes to ever be, after all.

So, come with me, dear reader, snooper, investigator and would-be savior, come with me on a grand adventure and let us find the stolen jewels together!

Most links will be in French, but I will translate the relevant parts in English.

Day at the museum

The crime scene

Like batman, combat isn't our only skill of note. We are also wickedly smart and astute, and any good investigation begins with a careful analysis of the crime scene, and what a crime scene it is.

The Louvre in all its splendor.

Not just a museum, but the most visited museum in the world. If you have so much as a passing interest in art, you have seen some visuals. The glass pyramid as in the picture above and the associated queue of people starved for art, the lavish interior, and of course, the paintings and jewelry on display. Crown of which being Da Vinci's La Joconde, safe and secure behind it's high-density glass panel. Here's a more accurate picture with the usual crowd. This is but one legendary piece of art, La Venus de Milo is there too, and lesser known pieces are rotated regularly.

Originally a defensible palace finished in the 13th century, it was meant to house kings and emperors before it was decided in the 17th century that the palace of Versailles was better suited as royal abode. The Louvre, bereft of housing and inhabitants to defend, was relegated to a storage place for art.

At the same time, generations of France's leaders were pushing for art in every form.

See, until the Renaissance (roughly until the 14th century), France was mostly known as the eldest daughter of the church and the mother of laws, on account of chivalrously wrecking neighbors and getting wrecked in turn. The church had the monopoly over culture, and it's only with the help of some enlightened leaders like Charles the fifth, who collected manuscripts and built the Royal Library (which became the National Library), that this monopoly began to break. The surviving parts of Charles the fifth's collection are still a core part of the current French art nucleus.

But it's around the 16th century that France became known as "mother of arts, weapons and laws," after a poem of Joachim du Bellay, poet (eh) and ardent defender of the French language as a vector of art. From there, the fascination of kings and emperors for creation and culture wouldn't stop growing. Francois premier built the Royal Print Shop (which became the National Print Shop) and the College of Three Languages, which would become the College of France later. He also famously attracted many Italian artists to France and is the reason Da Vinci came along with Mona Lisa.

In the 17th century came the one generally considered the paragon of culture, Louis XIV. He created a list of poets to subsidize, great authors like Molière were allowed to see the King directly and Louis personally spearheaded the cultural politics of the kingdom alongside exerting a strong control over architectural aesthetics. Art is noble, art is class, art elevates the soul.

This would result in the Louvre amassing quite the collection of national and international art. Roman and Greek statues, paintings, scepters, you name it.

But kings, like Night Shyamalan's career, are only cool for so long. Revolutionaries rose as crowned heads fell, and it was quickly decided to turn the Louvre into a proper museum to display France's finest. It was properly inaugurated as such at the tail end of the of the 18th century, and would see itself expanded both in space and in art, especially under Napoleon who proudly displayed the stuff he stole borrowed appropriated saved from Egypt or Italy. Showing off stolen goods and art from other countries, how very British of Napoleon, of all people.

Even after Napoleon's reign, efforts went on, and the museum is now divided into different wings dedicated to different parts of the world of art. Egyptian, middle east, archeological finds, decorative arts... You can spend a day there and not see it all as it deserves.

With nearly 9 million visitors in 2024 alone, the Louvre isn't leaving the top spot of museums any time soon. What better set for an art theft?

The Theft

If there ever was a good time to listen to Ocean's Eleven's soundtrack, it's now. A daring heist in the middle of the day in a crowded Louvre? George Clooney is jealous he didn't do it.

The step by step.

It is the 19th October of 2025, The Louvre opens at 9.00 am for a hungry crowd to come in. At 9.30 am, a truck and two motorbikes stop on the southern side of the Louvre. Here's a picture from above. On the left is the Jardin Des Tuileries, on the right is the Louvre. Look at the right-most bridge, the entry point is the corner on the left of said bridge, just above the water.

The lift is deployed, and two people dressed in worker's garb go up.

They reach a balcony on the first floor, whip out an angle grinder and start working their way through the glass door. They enter the Galerie Apollon at 9.34., where precious stones are held and, most famously, the French Crown Jewels.

The grinder attacks the glass of a display, and five members of the museum security team immediately come in. But the thieves wield what amounts to a huge electric saw, and there's a surprised and frightened public around. The security team decides to follow procedure and put the people to safety first and foremost.

As a security perimeter is put in place, a second display is assaulted by the angle grinder. It is 9.35 in the morning, and one of the employees films history being stolen.

The two displays give in, and at 9.37 the thieves swipe nine pieces of jewelry before leaving the same way they came in. Two drivers wait for them on the motorcycles. They leave, bags full of loot and leaving a poor truck behind.

Scratch that, it's eight pieces of jewelry. They left the damaged Crown of Empress Eugénie behind.

The theft lasted a grand total of seven minutes, with only four of them spent inside the Louvre. A daring heist, and a contender for shortest museum visit ever.

Every good pirate likes to go through their bounty, so let's have a closer look on what's been stolen:

• The emerald necklace, part of the emerald jewelry set of Empress Marie-Louise
• The pair of emerald earrings, part of the above emerald jewelry set belonging to the same Empress
• The tiara, part of the sapphire jewelry set of Queen Marie-Amélie and Queen Hortense
• The necklace, part of the above sapphire jewelry set belonging to the same Queens.
• One earring, part of the above sapphire jewelry set.
• The reliquary brooch of Empress Eugénie, adorned with two Mazarins diamonds
• The tiara of Empress Eugenie
• The great corsage brooch of Empress Eugénie

If it doesn't sound like much, remember these belonged to royalty, and royalty doesn't half-ass setting precious stones onto their doorknobs, let alone their jewelry. Let's look at the description of the reliquary brooch from the Louvre website (translated):

From top to bottom:

A rose window formed of seven diamonds circling a solitaire: two large diamonds opposed at their top (the two diamonds are the 17th and 18th Mazarin diamonds bequeathed to the Mazarin crown - used by Louis XIV among other things as buttons for his bodysuits), four small pear-shaped diamonds are suspended; one brilliant triangular and stretched out, with two suspensions for brilliants (another sort of diamonds), where a large ovoid diamond is attached; one shining with three brilliants trinkets; setting is made of golden silver. The reverse side is chiseled with scrolls and leaves.

One can qualify its style as historicity, as German Bapst, son of the craftsman, said. The piece was inspired by lead models of the 18th century that the house still possessed in 1889. We can question the term of reliquary that was attached to the brooch in 1887 when the crown's jewels were sold. The term is also engraved on the pin. But no space is present to fit a relic. A hypothesis is that the jewelry, easily taken apart, was designed to insert an intermediary element at a later time that would have contained a relic. At the back of the brooch's case is a small space that might have been designed to hold a relic. Empress Eugénie was very pious.

These eight pieces of jewelry translate into 8482 diamonds, 212 pearls, 35 emeralds and 34 sapphires.

The curs! The rapscallions! They slighted our empress, our sweet Eugénie, seminal figure of French culture.

No, wait, hold on a second, I'm told many people learned of her existence at the same time they learned of her crown being damaged.

Maybe we should thank the thieves for forcing a historical lesson down the throat of our citizens?

So... Who the hell are Marie-Louise, Marie-Amélie, Hortense and Eugénie? I can't blame the French for not knowing who they are, for the same reason I can't blame fellow Egyptians for not knowing every last Pharaoh. There's so many of them, and most people have other priorities like taking care of their families in a complicated economic situation.

And the jewels themselves have quite the tumultuous history.

A History Of (Class) Violence

These stones are used to the warmth of many hands.

The Galerie Apollon contains the Jewels of the French Crown.

Some of them.

The ones we still have.

Unsold.

Possibly.

As long as we had Kings and Queens, everything was fly. They bought shiny diamonds and opals and carnelians, added to the collection, sometimes had them cut to show the world they had the biggest stones around. Eventually, they had such wonderful stones they named them, like the Sancy or the Regent. It's like waifu body-pillows for royalty.

Then arrived the unwashed and angry masses in 1789, kicking ass and playing heavy metal. They made an inventory of the fancy stuff they had, counting 9547 diamonds, 513 pearls, 230 rubies, 71 topazes, 150 emeralds, 134 sapphires, 3 oriental amethysts, 8 Syrian garnets, and host of other stuff. They put it all in a place called the Garde-meuble de la Couronne.

Estimated price at the time: 23.922.197 pounds. The Regent diamond above alone was estimated at 12 million, the Sancy at 1 million.

Not bad.

Then, in the complicated mess that was post-revolution France, citizens decided equality meant equal information about everything, and soon everyone with a vested interest in ill-gotten gains knew the contents of the safes, where they were, and how little they were guarded.

From the 11th to the 16th September of 1792, five nights straight, two dozen thieves go in and out, in and out the Garde-Meuble, stealing about 9000 precious gemstones, the equivalent in price of seven tons of gold, for a value that today would amount to half a billion euro. For added fun, they didn't just steal, they also organized orgies by bringing in prostitutes. While they stole. I have no jokes to add to that.

On the night of the 16th September, some guards found suspicious the fact that people were moving out in the middle of the night and had a look.

Some of the thieves would escape capital punishment by denouncing colleagues, others would receive a crash-course on royal heads by losing theirs.

The investigation goes on, and many pieces are found again. Some of them in England, go figure. The big diamonds Sancy and Regent are recovered, and about three quarters of the stolen goods. But plenty of royal insignias and important objects like the diamond sword of Louis XVI disappear for good. As for why I got a picture of the latter, I'm not sure myself, as I couldn't find trace of it being found again, so it might be yet another sword.

Then, investigators find out many treasures might have been stolen before the September theft, as during two nights in August, six trunks were taken out of the Garde-Meuble.

Then, revolutionaries put a mortgage on some of the best pieces to fund the violent solutions to the many problems plaguing France.

Comes in Napoleon (1769 - 1821), the most violent solution of them all, who said violence doesn't solve anything? He was also pretty shrewd, admittedly, and didn't look like Joaquin Phoenix at all.

Through maneuvering and astute increasing of the national coffers by taking the riches where they could be found, Napoleon reimbursed many mortgages and began buying back treasures and increasing the collection once more, by adding the pink diamond Hortensia among other things. He didn't recover everything though, the Sancy diamond remained in the hands of a private collector. Successors would keep on adding to the collection, most notably...

Empress Eugénie! Fan of buying expensive stuff and wearing insanely-priced artifacts on herself. No wonder it's her ghost I can hear complain about the theft.

Then, comes the third Republic (1870 - 1940), in urgent need of money to either fund a social security for invalid workers or to fund a program to help museums. The former wins, and many jewels are sold, although some are considered too important to not be kept at home. It is decided in 1887 that Empress Eugénie's brooch would remain at the Louvre in the Galerie Apollon.

Then, due to wars in the next centuries and the need for more funds or genuine fear of having their stones stolen, many French nerds continue dispersing the pieces around. Either selling or hiding them.

Finally, in the 80's or so, the Louvre begins the grueling process of buying the stuff back. The Sancy diamond is brought back, so is Empress Eugénie's tiara in 1992. Her great corsage brooch arrives in 2008, just in time to be stolen less than two decades later.

As for the historical figures these belonged to? Marie-Louise, archduchess from Austria, married Napoleon the first in 1810. She moved to France, which must have been weird considering the French decapitated another Austrian archduchess twenty years prior, Marie-Antoinette. She wouldn't follow Napoleon in exile, something the French hated her for. They already hated her before that, so I guess she was pretty mellow about it.

Marie-Amélie married Louis-Phillipe d'Orléan in 1809. After Napoleon's defeat, they access the throne and the couple become the last King and Queen of France. The French being the French, another revolution happens (the third by this point) in 1848, and we haven't heard much of installing a new King or Queen since. Most notably, the couple died with their heads still firmly attached to their necks.

Hortense was Napoleon the Third's mom, wrote music and suffered exile to England.

Eugénie married Napoleon the third, would be Empress until the end of the Second French Empire in 1870. Despite there not being a crowning for her or her husband, a crown was still commissioned for her. Look, our historical Napoleons have a very personal take with what can be done with the rules and outside of it, ok? By the way her husband's crown has been lost, only hers is left.

That is the very short of it. Too short? That's the issue with having a convoluted, blood and violence-riddled history made of beheading kings and abolishing monarchy before re-instituting the monarchy and breaking it apart again before crowning an emperor which is very distinct from a king and then we do another revolution because why not before a convoluted parliamentary system is put in place and changed a dozen times before...

It takes being a full-on history nerd to remember all that in details. Most folks enjoy a visit to the museum, remember the lavish interiors and some key pieces but not the full wikipedia article about regents and leaders they had never heard of before the theft. Or if they did, they forgot about it.

Do the last paragraphs sound like random musings? They aren't, they are the crux of the issue surrounding the public discourse.

My France Hurts

With such a high-profile theft, everyone and their mom tried to grab a microphone to get a word in. I will pass over the many politicians who spoke while nothing was known of it, most of the time it was something along the line :

It is the history of France that has been stolen.

My absolute favorite one came from one Stephane Bern. Stephane Bern is likely the first person that will be mentioned if you ask a Frenchman "who in your country presents historical shows on tv?" There are others, but he is arguably the most well-known and has been around gushing over churches and paintings and whatnot for what feels like centuries. Surely, there are other good quotes, but his stuck with me.

C'est le symbole de l'effondrement d'une France qui est d'une certaine manière, en perdition.

Translated:

It is the symbol of the collapse of a France that is, in a way, sinking.

Melodramatic? Perhaps. Some satirists certainly had fun with that quote. Just so we're clear, Bern's quote I took is from a wider interview where he also spoke about the art itself. But in the many declarations surrounding the Louvre, there was a distinct impression art was taking a backseat while the theft was merely an alibi to speak about the country as a whole.

Some journalists noticed, so did editorial writers, pointing out this might be the first time ever many French people heard of the queens and empresses these jewels belonged to, as if the tearful rants were completely removed from the daily reality of the country.

And on the other side of the spectrum, tragedians feeling the wound in their souls, for it is impossible not to care about such a theft.

Really?

"Hold my eclair au chocolat," thought Michel Guerrin as he wrote an article for Le Monde. Le Monde isn't any journal, it's the most read and circulated journal in France.

Translated:

The jewels stolen at the Louvre, whose only value is in the precious metals they are made of, are first and foremost outdated and cumbersome objects.

Michel then goes on pointing out how pernicious it is of journalists and politicians to use the subject to advance their own agenda, which was happening a lot.

And while the debate, that has long spilled past the simple subject of art theft, is raging, some German person wonders if they can add some much-needed levity to the mix.

"Hold my Apfelstrudel," they exclaim, as they propose a new advertising for the brand they work for.

A brand of trucks with lifts on top. The brand that was used for the theft.

Here it is.

The picture is of the truck that was used for the theft.

Underneath is written in German:

When you gotta go fast.

And people say Germans don't have humor.

On it goes. Many voices say no price can be put on the jewels for they are invaluable. Along again comes Le Monde, who simply asks someone that hadn't been asked before: an expert in fancy colored stone.

As it turns out, you can say the value can't be calculated, on account of the jewels being so well known that they are unlikely to ever find a fencer. But the thieves could break apart the pieces, and gold and diamonds and emeralds can be sold apart to make a buck.

Hell, we have the receipts from when the pieces where bought. A brooch cost a little over 6 millions at the time it was bought. As it was displayed in the Louvre and with inflation, you could maybe sell it in a public sale anywhere between 10 and 20 million. That is obviously out of the question for the thieves, which leaves the 'taken apart' value, much easier to calculate. For the brooch, the value would be between 200.000 and 300.000 Euro.

Taken further, the full value of the loot would be between 50 and 100 million in a public sale. When fencing, it's generally considered the thieves get 5 to 10% of the full price, meaning there's about 5 million to be gained.

The other issue is that, even taken apart, the individual stones are known enough that they become hard to sell, so there is a good chance no buyer is ever found.

Naturally, the impact of losing pieces of art can't be gauged in numbers, but I very much appreciate Le Monde for adding some nuance to it.

The calls are coming from inside the museum

On the Louvre front, there were some weak points. How many? Yes.

Other museums had already been broken in months ago, showing how vulnerable they were (translated):

Several specimens of native gold were stolen, gold in its natural form, explained the museum, which evaluated the damage at 600.000 euros. "The value of the theft is calculated with the price of raw gold, there is however a historical value that can't be estimated."

You'd think the Louvre, on account of being the most visited museum in the world, had better security measures. Strikes happened earlier on the 16th of June of this year, the personnel being absolutely furious at the mass tourism making handling the masses next to impossible (translated):

The spontaneous strike began during a routine reunion, when caretakers, desk clerks and security personnel refused to take post to protest against the unmanageable crowds, chronic lack of manpower and what a syndicate qualified as "unsustainable" working conditions.

It is rare that the Louvre closes its doors to the public. It happened during the war, during the pandemic, and during a handful of strikes due to record crowds in 2019 or for security reasons in 2013.

One of the first information that got out after the theft, and a reason why people should keep their mouths shut before having enough information, was of the RAMSES alarm system. Witnesses pointed out there was no sound heard when the thieves broke in, and they took their loot in complete silence (apart from the angle grinder grinding). While I question the wisdom of naming an alarm system after an Egyptian pharaoh whose pyramids have been plundered so many times over even Attila is impressed, it must be noted there is such a thing as silent alarms. RAMSES was linked to the police and activated, but the theft went so fast perpetrators had left before police came in.

Which raises the question: how the hell did they manage to get in and out so fast?

As it turned out, the displays were changed recently. In old times, from around 1950 until recently, the glass was mounted on gears that, at the first alarm, could disappear into a safe in the floor. However, vibrations caused the art inside to be damaged, and they were a hassle to handle. So instead, they moved on to displays of high-security glass. Fair enough I suppose. Except the security glasses were not at the highest possible norms, hence why an angle grinder made short work of it.

Furthermore, several reports had been issued to the leadership of the Louvre about security issues, irony being that one such report identified the very balcony the thieves used as an obvious weakness.

The RAMSES alarm? Police pointed out the system suffered regular breakdowns, and in this case it was activated around 9.36 am, shortly before the thieves left, while by all means it should have activated when they broke through the balcony glass door.

The video surveillance is also dreadfully lacking, with several wings devoid of cameras, an outdated system, and the password is "Louvre". Seriously.

As Michel Guerrin (once again) in Le Monde summed it up by paraphrasing ex-president Jacques Chirac:

Les emmerdes, ca vole en escadrille.

Translated:

Shit flies in squadron

To point out how Laurence des Cars, current head of the Louvre, just can't catch a break (translated):

The president of the Louvre goes through one bother after the next with a metronome's regularity since the jewels were stolen, two months ago, to the point that the fate of brooch and tiaras seems to vanish as her own fate is debated.

Let's recap her arduous path since the theft. A wing was closed due to weak beams, a water leak damaged hundreds of documents, an old security audit was unearthed, pointing out the balcony as a security weakness, other ignored audits, three auditions by Madam des Cars before parliamentarians. Two reports written in metaphorical acid, one personnel strike, the fresh nomination of Philippe Jost, a polytechnician (after the name of a French school) with a soldier profile who piloted the restoration of Notre-Dame, to reorganize the Louvre in depth - understand, nobody is able to do it from inside.

At the very least, this high-profile theft brought real questions to the surface (translated):

Security issues, obsolete equipment, cooling system for the art pieces malfunctioning, lifts for people with limited mobility breaking down... the Louvre is breaking apart and yet it keeps on attracting more crowds (9 million visitors in 2024).

The number of visitors show a tension between an attractive museum and structural constraints linked to the building - an old palace that cannot welcome more visitors. The particularity of this geosymbol is its proximity with the power, notably presidential power.

Naturally, there's been many works promised to get the museum up to notch. To welcome people, and for an improved security.

Promises received a lukewarm reception. As alluring they seem, they also appear disconnected from the field reality that employees have to live through.

There is an ambiguity in this project between the will to integrate the museum into its territory, and welcoming [what the president announces as expected in the next 15 years] 12 million visitors. Whether it's the Louvre or the neighbouring territory, neither can absorb 12 million visitors per year. For comparison, the British Museum welcomes less than 6 million visitors a year.

Among proposals is also a price hike for extra-European visitors to finance the security and refurbishing works, which raises a lot of other questions.

All this to say, it's a mess, and I have no answers myself.

But let's look at the bright side.

They installed a grid on the balcony door.

As fascinating as it is, this is not why you followed me, dear reader. You're here for the hunt, the chase, the thrill, justice meted out by virtue of our righteous fists and heroic headbutts. We're not villains as long as our targets stay alive, brain concussions are A-Okay!

Keep reading here.