The Louvre Museum’s Apollon Gallery, where thieves carried out one of the most daring eight-minute heists in years, is open to the public again. However, with a twist, because there is nothing left to steal now.
The Apollo Gallery welcomed visitors again on Wednesday July 22, nine months after four masked thieves broke in and stole France’s crown jewels in broad daylight.
The museum has now removed everything from the room, even the empty display cases, and left only the gilded ceilings, frescoes and carved walls. The gallery has been restored to its original form, just as it was three and a half centuries ago (in the 1700s). At that time, the gallery served as a state room for Louis XIV, which he used to walk around and look up, not display cases filled with diamonds.
In an interview with The Parisian, The president and director of the Louvre museum, Christophe Leribault, said the surviving jewels will be transferred to a new vault somewhere in the museum, announcing that they would not return to the Apollon gallery.
He described the jewelry’s new location as “windowless, secure, nothing like the facility that allowed four men on scooters to enter.”
On October 19 last year, the thieves used a truck-mounted lift to reach a first floor window, broke through the glass and got in and out with eight pieces in less than eight minutes.
Among what they took: a tiara that belonged to Empress Eugénie, wife of Napoleon III, as well as jewelry linked to other queens of France going back generations.
It all totaled about 88 million euros, or about $102 million.
Only one piece reappeared. Eugenie’s crown was found outside the museum, apparently abandoned by the thieves as they fled. Everything else is still missing, as are the men who took it.
