Paris has seen its share of daring heists, but this one might be the strangest yet. A newly surfaced 36-second video shows two thieves making their escape from the Louvre Museum after stealing France’s crown jewels — not by sprinting into the night, but by slowly descending a furniture lift with €88 million worth of treasure in their arms. The footage, verified by independent sources, captures the bizarrely calm getaway from the museum’s Apollo Gallery.
In the clip, two men dressed in black, one wearing a motorcycle helmet and the other a high-visibility vest, can be seen inching down on a platform lift parked on the Quai François Mitterrand. Below them waits a stolen truck fitted with a 30-meter extendable ladder, which they had used to access a first-floor window. A voice, believed to belong to a security guard, is heard saying, “They are going to leave, they are going to leave,” before adding, “Damn, there we go, the police.” Moments later, the pair hop on scooters and vanish into the Paris streets.
The heist took place on a quiet Sunday morning shortly after the Louvre opened. Two members of a four-person gang broke through an unsecured window and used disc cutters to open two display cases. The entire operation took less than seven minutes, with only 3 minutes and 58 seconds spent inside the gallery. In that short time, they managed to steal eight priceless items, including an emerald and diamond necklace once gifted by Napoleon I to his second wife, Marie Louise, and a diadem that belonged to Empress Eugénie, wife of Napoleon III.
The world’s most visited museum has since been left facing difficult questions. Louvre director Laurence des Cars told senators that there had been a “terrible failure,” admitting that the building’s exterior had “highly insufficient” camera coverage. The revelation has stunned the French public, especially given the museum’s vast security budget.
Adding another twist to the story, the German manufacturer of the furniture lift used in the crime decided to turn the fiasco into marketing gold. As Euronews reported, the company launched an ad campaign referencing the incident, promoting its lift as “quiet as a whisper.”
More than 100 investigators are now working to track down the gang, searching CCTV footage and forensics. French media have already dubbed it “the heist of the century.” But with a slow-motion getaway, hi-vis jackets, and a furniture lift as their escape route, it’s hard not to think that these thieves pulled off one of the most cinematic crimes Paris has ever seen.