#crown-jewels

#crown-jewels

It took less than 10 minutes. At 9.30am on Sunday, four men arrived in a truck outside the Louvre in Paris, driving right up under a balcony and setting up a ladder with a furniture hoist. Two of them casually climbed up to the balcony and cut through the reinforced glass of a window; on the other side of the glass was the Apollo gallery, the most ornate and arguably the most beautiful room in the museum, Helen Pidd hears.

The daylight heist about 30 minutes after the Paris museum opened on Sunday, with visitors already inside, was among the highest-profile museum thefts in living memory and came as staff complained that swelling crowds and a lack of staff were straining security. The theft unfolded just 270 yards (810ft) from the Mona Lisa, in what French culture minister Rachida Dati described as a professional "four-minute operation". One object, the emerald-set imperial crown of Napoleon III's wife, Empress Eugenie, containing more than 1,300 diamonds, was later found outside the museum, French authorities said. It was reportedly recovered broken.