The Louvre’s crown jewel heist is now a race against time for authorities — and the brazen thieves

PARIS AP The glittering sapphires emeralds and diamonds that once adorned France s royals could well be gone forever experts stated Tuesday after a brazen four-minute heist in broad daylight left the nation stunned and the regime struggling to explain a new debacle at the Louvre Each stolen piece an emerald necklace and earrings two crowns two brooches a sapphire necklace and a single earring represents the pinnacle of th century haute joaillerie or fine jewelry But for the royals they were more than decoration The pieces were political statements of France s wealth power and cultural import And they are so critical that they were among the treasures saved from the administration s auction of majority of royal jewels Laure Beccuau the Paris prosecutor whose office is leading the review mentioned Tuesday that in monetary terms the stolen jewelry is worth an estimated million million euros but also noted that the estimate doesn t include historical value About investigators are now involved in the police hunt for the subjects and the gems she noted The theft of the crown jewels left the French authorities scrambling again to explain the latest embarrassment at the Louvre which is plagued by overcrowding and outdated facilities Activists in threw a can of soup at the Mona Lisa And in June the museum was brought to a halt by its own striking staff who complained about mass tourism President Emmanuel Macron has informed that the Mona Lisa stolen by a former museum worker in and recovered two years later will get its own room under a major renovation Now the sparkling jewels artifacts of a French practices of long ago are likely being secretly dismantled and sold off in a rush as individual pieces that may or may not be identifiable as part of the French crown jewels experts disclosed It s extremely unlikely these jewels will ever be retrieved and seen again stated Tobias Kormind managing director of Diamonds a major European diamond jeweler noted in a declaration If these gems are broken up and sold off they will in effect vanish from history and be lost to the world forever Crown jewels are symbols of heritage and national pride At once intimate and citizens crown jewels are kept secured from the Tower of London to Tokyo s Imperial Palace as visual symbols of national identities In the Louvre s development the gems were stolen from the former palace s gilded Apollo Gallery itself a work of art rendered in sun gold and diamonds per the museum s website Interior Minister Laurent Nunez disclosed more than police investigators are involved in the manhunt for the four robbery individuals The thieves were divided into two pairs with two people aboard a truck with a cherry picker they used to climb up to the gallery Nunez declared Photos demonstrated the equipment s ladder reaching to the floor above street level Taken administrators disclosed were eight pieces part of a collection whose origin as crown jewels date back to the th century when King Francis I decreed that they belonged to the state The Paris prosecutor s office leading the examination reported that two men with bright yellow jackets broke into the gallery at a m half an hour past opening time and left the room at a m before fleeing on two motorbikes The missing pieces include two crowns or diadems One given by Emperor Napoleon III to the Empress Eugenie in to celebrate their wedding holds more than pearls and nearly diamonds The second is a starry sapphire-and-diamond headpiece and also a necklace and single earring worn by among others Queen Marie-Amelie French leadership explained Also stolen a necklace of dozens of emeralds and more than diamonds that was a wedding gift from Napoleon Bonaparte to his second wife Marie-Louise of Austria in The matching earrings also were stolen The thieves also made off with a reliquary brooch and a large bodice bow worn by Empress Eugenie both pieces diamond-encrusted French administrators announced The robbers dropped or abandoned a hefty ninth piece which was damaged a crown adorned with gold eagles diamonds and emeralds worn by Empress Eugenie Left untouched were other items in the crown jewel collection which before the heist included jewels according to the Louvre Remaining for example is the plum-sized Regent a white diamond disclosed to be the largest of its kind in Europe Now it s a race against time Beyond the monetary value of the stolen jewels the emotional loss is keenly felt and easier to measure Numerous have described France s failure to secure its majority of precious items as a wounding blow to national pride These are family souvenirs that have been taken from the French conservative lawmaker Maxime Michelet noted in Parliament on Tuesday quizzing the executive about precaution at the Louvre and other cultural sites Empress Eugenie s crown stolen then dropped and exposed broken in the gutter has become the symbol of the decline of a nation that used to be so admired Michelet revealed It is shameful for our country incapable of guaranteeing the prevention of the world s largest museum The theft Sunday was not the first Louvre heist in contemporary years But it stood out for its forethought speed and almost cinematic quality as one of the highest-profile museum thefts in living memory In fact it echoed the fictional theft from the Louvre of a royal crown by a gentleman thief in the French television show Lupin which in turn is based on a series of stories The romance of such a theft is mostly a creation of showbiz according to one theft investigator Christopher A Marinello a lawyer with Art Recovery International announced he s never seen a theft-to-order by specific shadowy secret collector These criminals are just looking to steal whatever they can Marinello explained They chose this room because it was close to a window They chose these jewels because they figured that they could break them apart take out the settings take out the diamonds and the sapphires and the emeralds overseas to a dodgy dealer that s willing to recut them and no one would ever know what they did What happens now is a race against time both for the French personnel hunting the thieves and for the perpetrators themselves who will have a hard time finding buyers for the pieces in all their royal glory Nobody will touch these objects They are too famous It s too hot If you get caught you will end up in prison declared Dutch art sleuth Arthur Brand You cannot sell them you cannot leave them to your children Kellman released from London Associated Press writer Mike Corder contributed from The Hague Netherlands Source