PARIS – Thieves wielding power tools scaled a furniture hoist outside the Louvre to make off with priceless jewellery from the world-renowned museum on Oct 19, taking just seven minutes for the brazen, broad-daylight heist, sources and officials said.

The theft – just the latest to have targeted a French institution in recent months – saw the museum, the world’s most visited and filled with treasures including the Mona Lisa, shut its doors for the day to the busy weekend crowds.

AFP saw a police forensics team arrive and go into the museum, while uniformed soldiers with automatic rifles patrolled the Louvre’s famed esplanade, which was cleared of all visitors.

Roads around the museum were closed off with police tape.

Interior Minister Laurent Nunez said three of four thieves had used the furniture hoist to steal “priceless” goods from the museum’s “Gallerie d’Apollon” (“Apollo’s Gallery”).

It was not immediately clear what exactly they had stolen from the gilded gallery, which the museum’s website says is home to the French crown jewels.

They include three historical diamonds – the Regent, the Sancy and the Hortensia – as well as an emerald and diamond necklace that Napoleon gave his wife Empress Marie-Louise, it said.

The thieves arrived between 9.30am (3.30pm Singapore time) and 9.40am and stole jewellery, a source following the case said.

A separate police source said the thieves had drawn up on a scooter armed with angle grinders and used the hoist to reach the room they were targeting.

The brazen robbery happened just 800m from Paris police headquarters.

France’s Culture Minister Rachida Dati earlier on Oct 19 reported a “robbery” at the museum and said “no injuries” had been reported.

The Louvre said it was closing for the day “for exceptional reasons”.

But contacted by AFP, it did not wish to immediately provide further comment.

The Paris prosecutor’s office said it had opened an investigation and the value of the loot was still being estimated.

The seat of French kings until Louis XIV abandoned it for Versailles in the late 1600s, the Louvre is regularly listed as the world’s most visited museum.

The exhibition venue welcomed nine million visitors in 2025.

Louis XIV commissioned the “Gallerie d’Apollon” himself. It later served as a model for the Hall of Mirrors at the Chateau de Versailles.

Several French museum have recently been targeted.

In September, thieves

, making off with gold samples worth €600,000 (S$905,640).

They used an angle grinder and a blow torch to steal the native gold, a metal alloy containing gold and silver in their natural unrefined form.

In November 2024, four thieves

in broad daylight, breaking into a display case with axes and baseball bats.

They snuck into the Cognacq-Jay museum wearing gloves, hoods and helmets, striking in full view of other visitors to the museum.

French President Emmanuel Macron in January pledged the Louvre would be “redesigned, restored and enlarged” after its director voiced alarm