The Louvre museum in Paris reopened its doors to visitors on Wednesday, three days after it had been shuttered over the theft of precious royal jewellery, an AFP journalist saw.
From 9:00 am (0700 GMT), the museum’s usual opening time, the first visitors began entering the world-famous institution, though the museum said the Apollo Gallery, where Sunday’s theft occurred, remains closed.
The audacious daylight robbery on Sunday shortly after the museum opened caused estimated losses of around 88 million euros ($102 million), a sum the Paris prosecutor called “unparalleled” but incomparable to the loss to France’s historical heritage.
Scores of investigators are looking for the 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.
They made off with eight priceless 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.
Disappointed tourists were turned away at the entrance of the Louvre in the heart of Paris the day after the theft, and it remained closed on Tuesday as per its regular schedule.
But on Wednesday, it welcomed them again.
“We were really hoping it would be open. We had booked for today, and we wouldn’t have had another chance to come,” said one visitor, Fanny, who travelled from the south of the country with her daughter.
The world’s most visited museum, last year it welcomed nine million people to its extensive hallways and galleries.
The theft reignited a row over the lack of security in French museums, after two other institutions were hit last month.
The investigation “is progressing”, Interior Minister Laurent Nunez told local media on Wednesday, saying “more than a hundred investigators” had been mobilised.
“I have full confidence, that’s for sure, that we will find the perpetrators,” he said.
Museum director Laurence des Cars has not made any public statement since the theft and is set to appear before the Senate’s culture committee from 4:30 pm (1430 GMT) Wednesday.
Des Cars, who became the first woman to run the Louvre in 2021, is expected to be questioned about security at the Apollo Gallery, which houses the royal collection of gems.
The museum on Tuesday hit back at criticism that the display cases protecting the stolen jewellery were fragile, saying they were installed in 2019 and “represented a considerable improvement in terms of security”.
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