Louvre reopens Apollo Gallery after heist, but no jewels displayed

The Louvre’s Apollo Gallery is reopening to the public for the first time since last year’s brazen daytime crown jewels heist.

The Paris museum has removed the collections and precious jewels, returning the gallery to its original ceremonial purpose. Security at the museum has been boosted with new surveillance cameras and anti-intrusion systems.

On the day of the heist, thieves took less than eight minutes to steal the €88m (R1.65bn) trove. Security improvement is a priority of the decade-long “Louvre New Renaissance” plan, launched last year, to modernise infrastructure and ease crowding.

The public can tour the majestic room and view its gilded ceilings and Greek frescoes en route to the nearby Mona Lisa, but they won’t see crown jewels or empty display cases. The collections and precious jewels once displayed there have been removed as the museum said the Apollo Gallery is returning to its 17th-century original ceremonial purpose.

The stolen jewels remain unrecovered nine months later.

The gallery’s former exhibits will be relocated elsewhere in the museum, said Christophe Leribault, the Louvre’s director. “It’s also an opportunity to rediscover the splendid architecture and decor of this gallery,” he said.

Leribault was named to lead the Louvre in February when previous director Laurence des Cars resigned after the October crown jewels heist and a string of failures that battered confidence in the leadership of the world’s most-visited museum.

“That sinister day, when iconic pieces were taken, cannot be forgotten, and I believe it should not be,” said French culture minister Catherine Pegard.

“It was a trauma for the entire world, which, for several days, expressed its shock and sadness in every language. It was a trauma for us, discovering the fragility of a place we thought unshakeable, and which, like so many others, proved vulnerable.”

On the day of the heist, thieves forced their way through a window into the Apollo Gallery in a weekend operation that stunned visitors and exposed security vulnerabilities.

The “Louvre New Renaissance” plan will give the Mona Lisa a dedicated gallery by 2031.

Because the Louvre has been open as a public museum since 1793, it does not have a single official total count of every petty theft and pickpocket incident recorded. However, historians and art experts have documented several high-profile heists and thefts over its history:

1911 – the Mona Lisa: handyman Vincenzo Peruggia hid overnight, removed Leonardo da Vinci’s masterpiece from its frame, and walked out with it under his smock. It was recovered two years later in Italy.
1939 – Jean-Antoine Watteau’s L’Indifférent: art student Luc-Albert Cerdan removed the painting off the wall to “restore” it himself. It was returned to the museum a few months later.
1966 – antique jewellery loan theft: rare items were stolen while being transported back to the Louvre after a loan. They were later recovered in a grocery bag in New York.
1976 – Flemish painting: burglars slipped into the museum in January 1976 and made off with a 17th-century Flemish painting.
1976 – King Charles X’s coronation sword: masked thieves climbed exterior scaffolding in December 1976, broke through a second-floor window and stole the diamond-encrusted coronation sword. It has never been recovered.
1983 – 16th-century Milanese armour: a Renaissance helmet and breastplate vanished after a display case was smashed. The pieces resurfaced 38 years later, in 2021, when a family took them to an auction house for valuation.
1990 – Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s Portrait of a Seated Woman: a thief cut the small painting directly from its frame during public visiting hours.
1998 – Camille Corot’s Le Chemin de Sèvres: the landscape painting was cut out of its frame in broad daylight. It remains unrecovered.
2025 – crown jewels heist: in October 2025 thieves broke into the Galerie d’Apollon via an exterior window and 19th-century royal jewellery belonging to French queens and empresses in minutes.