At 9:30 a.m. on Oct. 19, 2025, four thieves disguised as construction workers parked a truck-mounted mechanical lift outside the Louvre. By 9:38 a.m., they had cut through a window, smashed the display vitrines in the Galerie d’Apollon, and grabbed jewels that once belonged to France’s Empress Eugénie and Queen Marie-Amélie. They dropped a crown before making their escape on scooters.
Authorities arrested four individuals in connection with the crime. The jewels—worth some $102 million—were never seen again. Investigators are working against time following two theories: one that the jewels are still in France, and the other, that they have been secretly shipped to Belgium, where the stones can easily be recut and resold clandestinely. And in July, Le Monde published claims by two suspects that a mysterious “sponsor” had recruited them to do the job—although the police have no physical evidence of this.
The theft sent shockwaves through France. The tiaras, crown, necklaces, and brooches belonged to monarchs far less famous than Marie Antoinette. Still, given France’s dearth of treasures predating the Revolution, they were considered the country’s “crown jewels.” The crime made the museum, an enduring symbol of national pride, into a punchline. Louvre thieves, decked out in high-vis vests and rhinestone tiaras, were a popular Halloween costume around the world that year. The robbery even inspired a bit on Saturday Night Live.
The robbery was the most dramatic misfortune to befall the Louvre in recent years, but it was far from the only one. There have been disastrous water leaks, labor unrest, and heists, not to mention a massive ticketing scandal, and ongoing court case against archaeologist and former Louvre president Jean-Luc Martinez for “money laundering and complicity in organized fraud” of illegally trafficked antiquities bought by the Louvre Abu Dhabi. (The lawsuit centers around a pink granite stele in the collection inscribed with Tutankhamun’s name; Martinez has maintained his innocence, but the case grinds on with the usual French lenteur.)
The state of affairs at the Louvre is a “catastrophe,” says Alain Quemin, an academic with a focus on the sociology of art. “It is such a pity,” he adds, “because the museum had been evolving favorably over the previous years. Martinez came from a modest background, and his nomination proved that candidates didn’t have to be from privilege. His successor, Laurence des Cars, was the first woman to hold that position, and the number of visitors was rising. The heist was really the worst thing [that could] happen.”
The Louvre, of course, has special resonance across France. It’s a symbol of national identity—a literal survivor of the country’s history. Once the treasure vault of Louis XIV’s personal collections, it has been open to the public since the 18th century. The museum is the most visited in the world, drawing 50 percent more visitors per year on average than the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and 40 percent more than the British Museum in London.
But the events of the past year have revealed that blockbuster shows, strong attendance, and pioneering scholarship mean little when an institution can’t manage the prosaic business of securing objects or maintaining its facilities. The Louvre is particularly compromised by its dependence on the French state, whose government is in disarray ahead of 2027’s impending presidential election. What does it imply if the world’s most famous museum can’t fulfill the most obvious duty in its job description: to care for art of historical significance?
The events of the past year have revealed that blockbuster shows, strong attendance, and pioneering scholarship mean little when an institution can’t manage the prosaic business of securing objects or maintaining its facilities.
Situated along the right bank of the Seine in the dead center of Paris, the Louvre originated as a 14th-century royal palace built on the grounds of a 12th-century medieval fortress. After the guillotining of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, the newly established French Republic converted the building into a museum in 1793. Initially, it showcased a collection of more than 530 paintings, mainly royal or confiscated church property. Today, the museum holds about half a million objects. Almost nine million people jostle through its doors every year, making a beeline for the same painting: La Joconde (the Mona Lisa).
There were signs the museum was vulnerable. It has less than one security camera, on average, in each of its 465 galleries, offering surveillance of less than 40 percent of public space. To make matters worse, some 200 jobs have been cut since 2015, many from security. France’s former minister of culture, Rachida Dati, told the country’s Senate last December that “measures need to be taken, far beyond questions of safety and security.” Last May, a man was arrested over a planned jihadist attack on the Louvre.
Shortly after the robbery, a valve opened in the heating system and water seeped onto hundreds of books and documents in the Egyptian department. A few months later, a water leak damaged a 19th-century ceiling painting by Charles Meynier. Fears about a ceiling collapse had already led to the closure of a gallery housing ancient Greek ceramics.
“The leaks have brought into focus the lamentable state of much of the piping,” says art historian Didier Rykner, the publishing director of the magazine La Tribune de l’Art and a persistent critic of French museums. “They can’t even heat some rooms” because the pipes are “so dilapidated,” he adds.
In a damning report by the Cour des Comptes, the government body that oversees state spending, auditors blasted the museum for neglecting the building in favor of more “visible and attractive” priorities. (Between 2018 and 2024, it said, the museum spent only $30.4 million on upkeep but $122.7 million on acquisitions.)
Then there was the ticket fraud. In February, officials uncovered a massive scam involving the reuse of tickets. Suspicions dated back to late 2024, when the Louvre filed a complaint with the police, suspecting that Chinese tour guides were reusing tickets and bribing museum employees to look the other way. According to investigators, the decade-long scheme cost the institution at least $12 million. Some of the money was reported to have been invested in real estate in France and Dubai, and authorities seized well over $1 million. Nine people are currently under investigation. A spokesperson for the Louvre says that the investigations “will shed full light on the reported activities,” adding that the museum had “implemented a structured anti-fraud plan” that includes both technical and legal measures.
France’s leadership was well aware of the threats that the building might pose to the treasures it houses. In a confidential letter sent on Jan. 13, 2025 and subsequently leaked, des Cars, the museum’s then-director, complained to Dati that the facilities were “worryingly obsolescent.”
Later that month, French president Emmanuel Macron unveiled a sweeping renovation plan dubbed “Louvre New Renaissance.” The cost—as estimated by the Cour des Comptes—would be more than $1 billion. The project proposed moving the Mona Lisa to a huge new space dug out under the courtyard. It would have its own dedicated entrance, with a separate timed entry ticket and fee. (The project would also be funded by an overall price hike, implemented this year, for non-European visitors from $25 to $37.)
Part of the goal was to address the increasingly untenable overcrowding. Some 80 percent of visitors, according to the Louvre’s own research, want to see the Mona Lisa, but most leave deeply unhappy, having faced a barrage of selfie-snappers in a packed room without having a real chance to approach the painting. “The cluster-crowd to see Mona Lisa has been like this for decades, and just gets worse,” said one disgruntled visitor.
Macron’s plan would also involve a “new grand entrance” dubbed the Grande Colonnade, near the Seine. Scheduled to open in 2031 at an estimated cost of $779 million, the project has proven highly controversial. (Studios Architecture Paris and Selldorf Architects were selected this spring for the commission.) The Cour des Comptes tutted: “It is of the utmost importance that the museum be able to hierarchize to its projects, prioritizing investments that are decisive to its future, particularly the upgrading of technical infrastructure, especially its safety and security systems, and the restoration of the palace.”
According to two sources, there were hopes that the luxury goods mogul Bernard Arnault—CEO of LVMH—would step in to help finance the project. LVMH’s flagship department store, La Samaritaine, is just steps away, and there were rumors of plans to connect the store to the Grande Colonnade. (Nothing has been announced so far, and the Louvre said it had never heard of the plan. At press time, LVMH had not replied to a request for comment.)
The museum is the most visited in the world, drawing 50 percent more visitors per year on average than the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and 40 percent more than the British Museum in London.
Bowing to the storm, des Cars left the Louvre in February, having first offered to leave immediately after the robbery. “She was initially protected by Macron because he so wanted the ‘Louvre New Renaissance’ project,” my informant told me. Traditionally, French presidents leave a grand projet—Mitterrand had his library, Chirac the Musée du Quai Branly. Macron wanted 12 million visitors to the Louvre, hoping this would be his cultural legacy. But apparently Dati insisted that des Cars should leave, and Macron finally relented. (Dati left her post as minister of culture later that month.) Shortly afterward, the art historian Christophe Leribault was nominated president of the Louvre following his previous stints at the Musée d’Orsay and at Versailles.
“The theft highlighted one particular risk, but dangers come in many forms. The terrorist threat, activists’ demands, fire safety vigilance, and now cybersecurity,” Leribault told the French newspaper Le Monde in May. “The Louvre is the equivalent of a Paris neighborhood, all of it listed as a historic monument. Installing cameras and detectors is not enough. That has to be done, of course, but in coordination with other complex and lengthy infrastructure works.”
The artist Paul Cézanne is frequently quoted as saying that “the Louvre is the book from which we learn to read.” The problems of the previous year have shown us just how badly the book needs repair. One thing is certain: Leribault has a massive task on his hands.
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