Other Brazen Art Heists Like the Louvre Jewelry Theft

For decades, thieves have been slipping past alarms and guards at museums across the world to steal jewels and paintings meant to outlast us all.

They’ve scaled walls. They’ve dropped through skylights. They’ve disguised themselves as police officers, curators, even janitors to sneak in and out undetected with valuable artwork and artifacts.

On Sunday, art thieves entered the Apollo Gallery at the Louvre in Paris and left with eight items of jewelry said to be of “incalculable” worth. Among them: a crown worn by Empress Eugénie, set with 212 pearls and nearly 3,000 diamonds.

The theft joined a long line of breaches at museums large and small, pilfering swords, Renoirs and even the Mona Lisa.

Here are some of the better known thefts:

The Mona Lisa Heist, 1911

One summer day, Vincenzo Peruggia, a former worker at the Louvre, tucked the Mona Lisa beneath his coat and carried it into the Paris streets. For two years, the painting remained missing, increasing its fame around the world. When the painting reappeared after Peruggia tried to unload it in Italy, Mona Lisa was no longer merely a portrait, but a legend.

Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, 1990

Two men dressed as police officers walked into the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and left with an estimated $500 million in art treasures. No one has found any of the 13 works lost in the heist — considered the largest art theft in history — including a rare Vermeer and three precious Rembrandts. The frames that housed the paintings remain, their emptiness serving as a reminder of the loss.

National Museum in Oslo, 1994

Like the robbers at the Louvre, two men in Norway climbed a ladder and broke a window to steal the nation’s best-known painting: “The Scream,” by Edvard Munch. It took them less than a minute, and they left behind the ladder, wire cutters and a note: “A thousand thanks for your poor security.”

The painting was recovered three months later, after the government refused to pay a $1 million ransom demand. Four Norwegian men were arrested in an elaborate sting operation in which undercover agents posed as representatives of the Getty Museum in Los Angeles.

Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, 2000

As fireworks lit up the night skies to welcome the new millennium, a thief — or perhaps multiple thieves — dropped through a skylight, filled the gallery with smoke, and left minutes later with Cézanne’s “View of Auvers-sur-Oise.” It has not surfaced since.

Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, 2003

Robert Mang, an alarm technician, climbed up scaffolding, entered the Vienna museum through a window and stole a gold-plated sculpture by Benvenuto Cellini — the Saliera, or salt cellar, a Renaissance treasure worth $60 million. He held it for years, sending ransom notes, until police traced a text message from a newly purchased cellphone.

Musée d’Art Moderne in Paris, 2010

Vjeran Tomic, a famed thief known as “Spider-Man” for his acrobatic burglaries, slipped through a window without setting off the museum’s alarms. He took five masterpieces: works by Picasso, Matisse, Modigliani, Braque and Léger. He said later he had intended to take just the Léger, but took the others because he realized he had more time and he “liked” them. None of the works have ever been found.

Green Vault in Dresden, 2019

Just before two robbers shimmied through their pre-cut hole in a window grate before dawn, they detonated a homemade firebomb in front of a power distribution box. The blast knocked out streetlights around the Green Vault, a set of basement suites that is now part of a museum in Dresden Castle.

The thieves made off with jewels worth about $100 million, lavish pieces from late 18th and early 19th centuries that once belonged to local rulers. They blanketed the room with powder to throw forensic investigators off their scent. Most of the loot has been returned, and five men were convicted in the robbery, but a significant diamond, an elaborate brooch and an epaulet are still missing, while other pieces were damaged or oxidized.