Louvre Museum Lacks Adequate Camera Coverage Of Outside Walls, Says Director

Last Updated:October 23, 2025, 01:21 IST

Louvre Museum faces scrutiny after a $102 million jewel heist, with director Laurence des Cars admitting security camera gaps. Discover the latest updates.

The Louvre heist follows two other high-profile museum thefts in France last month. (Pic: AFP)

Days after robbery of jewels worth more than $100 million, Louvre director on Wednesday said the museum lacked adequate security camera coverage of the outside walls.

“Despite our efforts, despite our hard work on a daily basis, we failed," Laurence des Cars told lawmakers the Senators when questioned about how the thieves were able to run away with 88 million euros ($102 million) in jewels from the famous museum in just seven minutes.

She further said that all alarms were functioning during the burglary but there were not enough security cameras covering the thieves’ point of entry.

“The only camera installed is directed westward and therefore did not cover the balcony involved in the break-in," she said. “There are some perimeter cameras, but they are aging," she conceded. Surveillance of the museum’s outside walls “is highly insufficient".

ABS-CBN quoted her defending the museum’s estimated €88 million (£74 million) security plan, disputing a recent report that cited “persistent delays" in putting it into effect.

According to Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau, the theft took place on Sunday morning, shortly after the museum reopened to the public. The robbers, believed to be a four-member gang, parked a moving truck with an extendable ladder below the Louvre’s Apollo Gallery, home to priceless royal artefacts. Within seven minutes, they had climbed into the building through a window, broken open display cases using cutting tools, and vanished with eight historic pieces of jewellery.

Among the stolen items were an emerald-and-diamond necklace gifted by Napoleon I to Empress Marie-Louise and a diamond diadem once owned by Empress Eugénie, which alone contains nearly 2,000 diamonds.

Meanwhile, experts have opined that the jewels may likely never be recovered.

“It’s extremely unlikely these jewels will ever be retrieved and seen again," Associated Press quoted Tobias Kormind, managing director of 77 Diamonds, a major European diamond jeweller, as saying in a statement. “If these gems are broken up and sold off, they will, in effect, vanish from history and be lost to the world forever."

The Louvre Museum reopened its doors on Wednesday, three days after a daring heist that saw thieves flee with royal jewellery. Visitors streamed back into the world-famous museum for the first time since the audacious robbery, which stunned France and made global headlines.

The Louvre heist comes barely a month after a break-in at Paris’s Natural History Museum, where gold nuggets worth over $1.5 million were stolen. The back-to-back incidents have renewed calls for tighter security at France’s premier cultural institutions.

Despite the lingering shock, the Louvre’s reopening drew crowds eager to return to the galleries, a sign, perhaps, that even the world’s most sensational art heist cannot dim the allure of one of humanity’s greatest cultural treasures.

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