The Louvre reopened Wednesday three days after a heist forced the museum to shut its doors to visitors.
Louvre Director Laurence des Cars is set to face questioning by a committee at the French Senate later Wednesday amid questions over the security provisions at the world’s most visited museum, according to reports.
Des Cars, who has run the Louvre since 2021, has not made any statement since thieves made off with royal jewels during a robbery Sunday that took just seven minutes.
President Macron orders security measures
French President Emmanuel Macron on Wednesday urged ministers to ensure security was tightened more rapidly at the Louvre museum after thieves snatched jewels worth more than $100 million, a government spokeswoman said.
At a cabinet meeting, Macron said “security measures were being deployed for the Louvre and requested a speeding up of these measures,” Maude Bregeon told journalists, according to a report by France 24.
The Louvre robbery has reignited a row over the lack of security in French museums, after two other institutions were hit last month.
During a Wednesday meeting of cabinet ministers, Macron ordered a “speeding up” of security measures at the Louvre, government spokeswoman Maude Bregeon said.
“The Louvre curator estimated the damages to be €88 million,” or $102 million, Paris Prosecutor Laure Beccuau said Tuesday, according to the report, adding that the greater loss was to France’s historical heritage, adding that the thieves would not pocket the full windfall if they had “the very bad idea of melting down these jewels”.
Thieves escape on scooters after dropping diamond crown
Scores of investigators are looking for Sunday’s culprits, working on the theory that it was an organised crime group that clambered up a ladder on a truck to break into the museum, then dropped a diamond-studded crown as they fled.
Beccuau confirmed that four people were involved in Sunday’s robbery and said authorities were analysing fingerprints found at the scene.
Detectives are scouring video camera footage from around the museum as well as of main highways out of Paris for signs of the robbers, who escaped on scooters.
Louvre Museum Heist: How thieves used truck ladder to steal $102 million in jewels
In Sunday’s heist, thieves parked a truck with an extendable ladder, like those frequently used by movers in Paris, below the museum’s Apollo Gallery shortly after it opened, climbing up and using cutting equipment to get through a window and open display cases to steal the jewellery.
They made off with eight pieces, including an emerald-and-diamond necklace that Napoleon I gave his wife Empress Marie-Louise and a diadem that once belonged to the Empress Eugenie, which is dotted with nearly 2,000 diamonds.
The museum on Tuesday hit back at criticism that the display cases protecting the jewellery were fragile, saying they were installed in 2019 and “represented a considerable improvement in terms of security”.
