Museum bosses say the Louvre failed to catch the jewel thief early enough

The Louvre failed to detect a gang of thieves early enough to stop the theft of French crown jewels worth €88m (£76m), the museum’s director has revealed.

Laurence des Cars, speaking publicly for the first time since the theft on Sunday, told French senators that CCTV around the perimeter of the Louvre was weak and “aging”.

The only camera monitoring the exterior wall of the Louvre was facing away from the first-floor balcony facing the Apollo gallery, she said.

“We have failed these jewels,” she said, adding that “no one is protected from brutal criminals – not even the Louvre”.

Ministers have given press conferences and interviews denying security lapses, but Des Carnes cut them short and admitted the Louvre had been “defeated”.

Her words gave an extraordinary insight into the difficulty of securing the world’s most visited museum and how bad its security really was.

The CCTV system outside the Louvre was “very unsatisfactory” and inside, some areas were too old to adapt to modern technology.

Despite the huge number of visitors to the museum – 8.7 million last year – investment in security has slowed and she highlighted the budget challenges facing large institutions.

Des Cars, who will become director of the Louvre in 2021, said she wants to double the number of CCTV cameras.

She said that when she took the job, she was warned about how “outdated” the equipment at the Louvre was, compared to the modern equipment at the Musée d’Orsay, where she had previously worked.

Some of the senators who confronted her at Wednesday’s hearing expressed disbelief about the Louvre’s security, asking why there was only one camera — on the outer wall on the river side — and why it was pointing the wrong way.

That single failure meant that the lorry carrying the gang and their mechanical ladder to reach the first floor of the gallery was nowhere to be seen when they arrived at the base of the Apollo Gallery.

“The Louvre has a weakness, and I fully admit it,” Des Cars told the senators.

She praised the security guards who she said acted quickly to evacuate the building when they noticed an intrusion, but admitted: “We didn’t see the arrival of the thieves early… our perimeter defenses are known to be weak.”

Although the gallery remained closed, the museum reopened on Wednesday.

The Louvre is home to priceless works of art, including Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa.

The hunt is still on for a gang of four who broke into the world’s most famous museum, less than 10 minutes away last Sunday morning. He made off with eight precious jewels, including a diamond and emerald necklace given to his wife by Emperor Napoleon.

As they fled, they dropped Empress Eugenie’s 19th-century diamond-encrusted tiara. Although it was recovered, the crown was damaged, and Laurence des Cars told senators that it had probably been crushed out of its display case by thieves.

“Preliminary assessments indicate that a fragile restoration is possible,” Des Cars said.

Some of the museum’s problems she raised at the hearing included cuts in surveillance and security staff over the past decade and an infrastructure that can’t handle the latest generation of video equipment.

The director hopes to begin work on safety improvements in early 2026.

However, it is expected to be challenging due to the old infrastructure that once housed the royal palace.

Des Cars said she had submitted her resignation to the Ministry of Culture after the theft, but it was rejected. She told senators that she had been concerned about the condition of the Louvre for some time.

She became animated, even angry, as she defended herself against media accusations that she had put her own comfort ahead of protecting the Louvre and its historic collections.

“I’m wound up as chair and director that the warnings I was giving as a whistle-blower in a sense came to fruition last Sunday.

“We have been a terrible failure at the Louvre. I take responsibility for that,” she said.

Interior Minister Laurent Nunez told France’s Europe 1 radio on Wednesday that he had “every confidence” the thieves would be caught.

Prosecutors said their theory is that the robbers were under the orders of a criminal organization.