PARIS — PARIS (AP) — Thieves have reportedly stolen nine pieces from the jewelry collection of Napoleon and the Empress. in the Louvre, Taking the basket elevator to get to the museum on Sunday morning.
The brazen robbery of the world's most visited museum took place while tourists were in the Apollo Gallery, where some of the French Crown Jewels are on display.
The museum closed for the day as police sealed the gates and escorted visitors out.
Here are some other famous robberies from around the world:
The Louvre has a long history of thefts and attempted robberies. The greatest fame came in 1911, when Mona Lisa disappeared from the frame, it was stolen by Vincenzo Perugia, a former employee who hid in the museum and came out with the painting under his coat.
Two years later he was found in Florence. This episode helped make Leonardo da Vinci's portrait the most famous work of art in the world.
This event was called the largest art heist in US history, but 35 years later, 13 works of art were stolen. Boston Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum remains unresolved.
In the early morning of March 18, 1990, two men disguised as Boston police officers snuck into the museum, saying they were answering a call. They overpowered two security guards, tied them up with duct tape and, over the course of 81 minutes, stole 13 works of art, including masterpieces by Rembrandt, Vermeer, Degas and Manet.
Authorities say the artwork is worth about half a billion dollars. Museum staff say it is priceless because it cannot be replaced.
Some works, including Rembrandt's “Storm on the Sea of Galilee”, were cut from their frames. These frames still hang empty in the museum to this day.
In 2017, robbers of the Berlin Bode Museum. stole a 100-kilogram (220-pound) Canadian solid gold coin known as the “Big Maple Leaf”.
The suspects are believed to have broken the protective case and then managed to remove the coin from a museum window before fleeing along the train tracks with their cargo in a wheelbarrow. After they got away with it, authorities believe they later cut up the coin, worth about 3.75 million euros ($4.33 million), and sold it in pieces.
Three men were later convicted, including a museum security guard.
Two years later, thieves broke windows in Green Vaults of Dresdenone of the oldest museums in the world, and stole hundreds of millions of euros worth of diamond-encrusted royal jewels.
Officials said they made off with three “priceless” sets of 18th-century jewelery that could not be sold on the open market.
Part of the catch was later recovered. Five men were convicted and the sixth was acquitted.
The thief who stole a golden toilet from the English palace was convicted earlier this year along with an accomplice who helped cash in on the spoils of an 18-carat piece of art insured for almost £5 million (more than $6 million).
Prosecutors said Michael Jones used a fully functioning one-of-a-kind toilet while scouting Blenheim Palace – the country mansion where British wartime leader Winston Churchill was born – the day before the theft. He described the experience as “great.”
He returned before dawn on September 14, 2019, along with at least two other men armed with sledgehammers and crowbars. They smashed a window and tore the toilet away from the water supply within five minutes, leaving behind a devastating flood as they fled in stolen cars.
Italian conceptual artist Maurizio Cattelan's satirical piece America satirized excessive wealth. He weighed just over 215 pounds (98 kilograms). The value of gold at that time was $2.8 million ($3.6 million). The stolen pot was never found but is believed to have been cut up and sold.
Previously the work was on exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum in New York. The museum had offered this job to US President Donald Trump during his first term as president after he asked to borrow a Van Gogh painting.
