On Oct. 18, 2025, four masked men accomplished the impossible: robbing the most visited museum in the world.The Louvre, located in Paris, France, houses art’s finest commodities from the Mona Lisa to authentic Napoleonic jewelry that was recently stolen.
What’s most bizarre about this feat is not the millions of dollars lost, the worldwide manhunt, or the failure of security; it’s the fact that these four men managed to steal 88 million euros (approximately $102 million) in seven minutes.
At 9:30 a.m., just 30 minutes after the museum had opened to visitors, the thieves began by setting up a ladder outside the Louvre to access the second floor.
Two of the four thieves climbed the ladder dressed as construction workers and used a power tool for cutting through hard materials called an angle grinder to cut through a window in the Apollo Gallery, a notable few rooms away from the iconic Mona Lisa.
Then, they smashed two display cases and removed eight pieces of jewelry belonging to Emperor Napoleon and his wife. Consequently, at minute seven, 9:37 a.m., the alarm was triggered.
A few minutes later, the thieves descended the ladder and boarded motorbikes, fleeing southeast toward the A6 highway and the city of Lyon. Ironically, in their hasty escape, they dropped one of the eight stolen pieces of jewelry, a crown adorned with over a thousand diamonds belonging to Empress Eugénie. Shortly after, when the robbery was confirmed, the police recovered the damaged but intact crown.
As remarkable and unlikely as the story may seem, the Louvre has a long history of frequent robberies. Most famous is the Mona Lisa heist of 1911, where former Louvre employee Incenzo Peruggia stole and hid the painting for three years, in hopes of one day returning it to Italy.
There were exclusively small incidents and art transport interceptions until 1998, when a group of thieves cut the famous painting Le Chemin de Sèvres (The Sevres Road) from its frame and smuggled it out of the museum. The incident led to a dramatic tightening in security, a safety measure that seemingly worked up until now.
The perpetrators of this seemingly cinematic plot have yet to be identified, and an active manhunt for any and all signs of them continues. There has also been a rumor that thieves were not purely motivated by the value of the jewels, but might have been commissioned by a private collector.
Either way, these four thieves have accomplished the impossible: they broke into one of the most guarded museums in the world, stole national treasures and, most extraordinarily, they did it in exactly seven minutes.
By Mahina Diaz-Asper