SERIES OF HEISTS
A number of French museums have lately been focused.
Final month, thieves broke into Paris’s Pure Historical past Museum, making off with gold samples price €600,000 (US$700,000).
They used an angle grinder and a blow torch to steal the native gold, a metallic alloy containing gold and silver of their pure, unrefined type.
In November final yr, 4 thieves stole snuffboxes and different valuable artefacts from one other Paris museum in broad daylight, breaking right into a show case with axes and baseball bats.
They snuck into the Cognacq-Jay museum sporting gloves, hoods and helmets, putting in full view of different guests to the museum.
The Louvre additionally has a protracted historical past of thefts and tried robberies.
Essentially the most notorious was in 1911, when the Mona Lisa vanished from its body, stolen by Vincenzo Peruggia, a former employee who hid contained in the museum and walked out with the portray below his coat. It was recovered two years later in Florence – an episode that helped make Leonardo da Vinci’s portrait the world’s best-known art work.
In 1983, two Renaissance-era items of armour had been stolen and solely recovered practically 4 a long time later. The museum’s assortment additionally bears the legacy of Napoleonic-era looting that continues to spark restitution debates immediately.
House to greater than 33,000 works spanning antiquities, sculpture and portray – from Mesopotamia, Egypt and the classical world to European masters – the Louvre’s star sights embrace the Mona Lisa, the Venus de Milo and the Winged Victory of Samothrace.
The museum can draw as much as 30,000 guests a day and final yr it welcomed 8.7 million guests.
French President Emmanuel Macron in January pledged the Louvre could be “redesigned, restored and enlarged” after its director voiced alarm about dire circumstances inside.
He stated he hoped that the works may assist enhance the annual variety of guests to 12 million.
