Where might the stolen Louvre jewels end up; will the robbers be caught?

The Louvre Museum in Paris, France, reopened to the public on Wednesday after a jewellery heist prompted a three-day closure.

During the robbery, a band of thieves broke into the French capital’s iconic museum and stole eight items of jewellery containing precious jewels from the Napoleonic era on October 19. The robbers are still at large, and the jewels have not been found.

Here is what we know so far about where the jewellery could be, whether it can be traced and whether the robbers will be found.

What was stolen from the Louvre?

At 9:30am (07:30 GMT), a group of robbers used a truck-mounted ladder to reach the gilded Galerie d’Apollon (Apollo’s Gallery) on the second floor of the museum before taking an angle grinder to a window to access the French crown jewels. The heist took place about half an hour after the museum opened to the public.

The stolen articles were:

• A tiara from the jewellery set of Queen Marie-Amelie and Queen Hortense

• A necklace from the same duo’s sapphire jewellery set
• A single earring from the sapphire jewellery set
• An emerald necklace from a set belonging to Empress Marie-Louise
• A pair of emerald earrings from the Marie-Louise set
• A brooch known as the “reliquary” brooch
• The tiara of Empress Eugenie
• A large brooch of Empress Eugenie

The robbers also stole a ninth item, the crown of Empress Eugenie, wife of Napoleon III. But it was recovered nearby, thought to have been dropped by the thieves, according to the French Ministry of the Interior.

How much are the stolen items worth?

The haul of jewels is worth an estimated 88 million euros ($102m), Paris public prosecutor Laure Beccuau told RTL Radio on Tuesday.

“It is important to remember that this damage is an economic damage, but it is nothing compared to the historical damage caused by this theft,” Beccuau said.

Why is this heist different from previous robberies at the museum?

This is not the first time the Louvre has been robbed. However, previous robberies have mostly involved the theft of paintings – for example, the Mona Lisa, which was stolen in 1911 – rather than jewels.

“A jewellery theft is a very different thing to consider because of the high intrinsic value of the object stolen,” American art historian Noah Charney told Al Jazeera on Tuesday.

“A painting doesn’t have a high intrinsic value because it’s usually made of panel and pigment, and canvas and nothing more. Whereas jewellery has a high intrinsic value because if you break down what was stolen and sell the components, the value is still significant,” Charney explained.

Where could the jewels be now?

The jewels are most likely still in France, Dutch art historian Arthur Brand told Al Jazeera.

They could be sold on the black market, but this would reduce their value because of the high risk associated with being in possession of them.

“They are very ‘hot’ and the price on the black market will be way below the regular market,” Brand said, estimating that the black market prices would be between 10 and 30 percent of their value. This means the $102m jewels could sell at between $10.2m and $30.6m on the black market.

Charney said the thieves will not need to go to the black market at all if the jewels are recut significantly and no longer identifiable.

However, re-cutting gems also reduces their value. If a thief tries to re-cut an antique diamond into a modern shape, they may lose some of the diamond’s size and value.

“When jewels are stolen, either from homes or shops or museums, they’re usually taken from their settings and simply resold like any other gem. If the gems are especially large or otherwise identifiable, thieves will take them to a crooked lapidary to have them recut,” American art historian and lawyer Erin Thompson told Al Jazeera.  “The raw materials in these pieces are valuable, but worth much less than the pieces themselves, thanks to their historical value.”

She cited the example of a gold toilet, an artwork stolen in 2019 from the United Kingdom’s Blenheim Palace. The gold itself was worth only two-thirds of what the artwork itself was worth. When the value is in the millions of dollars, that’s “a big loss – but it’s free money, so I suppose the thieves don’t really care,” Thompson said.

And once the jewels, in the case of the Louvre robbery, are “divided up into several smaller stones, they will be untraceable”, she added.

Thompson said the gems from the Louvre might end up in one of the world’s major stone-cutting centres, such as New York, Antwerp or Thailand.

Brand, however, said, said that the thieves might alternatively, “try to sell the jewels in countries like India, Israel or Dubai [United Arab Emirates]”.

Will the thieves be caught?

“The thieves will get caught for sure. [The likelihood of] recovering the jewels is 50 percent – depends on the time it will take to arrest the thieves,” Brand said.

Public prosecutors have tasked the BRB (Brigade de Repression du Banditisme – or the Banditry Repression Brigade), a specialised Paris police unit experienced in handling high-profile thefts, with investigating the heist.

Police are expected to review surveillance camera footage going back weeks in an attempt to identify suspicious people in and around the premises.

However, time is limited because if the jewels are recut, they will never be returned to their original form, even if the thieves are caught.

“In thefts like this from museums, the people who actually enter the museum are almost always local career criminals who have been hired for the job. Thanks to surveillance cameras, DNA analysis and other investigative techniques, these thieves are almost always eventually apprehended,” Thompson said.

“It’s proven much more difficult to catch the people who planned the job and hired them, though. I am betting that the people who entered the Louvre will be caught, but it’s unlikely that the pieces they stole will be recovered, since in most similar cases, the pieces are broken apart and the metal melted down within hours.”

Have there been other robberies in European museums recently?

The Louvre robbery comes amid a recent spate of jewellery thefts from other museums in Europe. Recent incidents include:

September 2025: Museum of Natural History, France

On September 30, a 24-year-old Chinese woman was arrested in Barcelona after stealing six gold nuggets from the Museum of Natural History in Paris. The gold nuggets were worth about 1.5 million euros ($1.74m).

The woman was arrested while trying to dispose of melted gold – it is unclear who may have melted it. The museum’s alarms and security system had been disabled in a cyberattack, but it is also unclear whether the thieves were behind the cyberattack or whether the theft was opportunistic.

January 2025: Drents Museum, Netherlands

In late January, thieves stole four artefacts, including three gold bracelets and a gold helmet that was estimated to be about 2,500 years old, from the Drents Museum in Assen, northeast Netherlands.

The artefacts were part of an exhibit on the Dacians, an ancient society that once inhabited the land that is now Romania.

In late July, the Dutch Public Prosecution Service (PPS) announced that the investigation into the heist had concluded and three suspects had been identified. The suspects have been arrested and formally indicted, Dutch media reported. Their latest hearing was on October 16 at a court in Assen.

The PPS did not give information about where the stolen items were located. In an update on May 9, it said it believed they had not been melted down and that the main suspects still had possession of them. “There is currently no information about whether there was an external client behind the theft,” the PPS said.

May 2024: Ely Museum, UK

On May 7, a gold torc and gold bracelet, dating back to the Bronze Age, were stolen from the Ely Museum, Cambridgeshire, in the United Kingdom.

Later that month, independent charity Crimestoppers offered a 5,000-pound ($6,671) reward for information leading to the conviction of the thieves. There have not been updates on whether the thieves have been caught or the stolen items recovered.

November 2022: Celtic and Roman Museum, Germany

Thieves stole 483 ancient gold coins from the Celtic and Roman Museum in Manching, Bavaria. An official estimated that the coins were worth $1.7m, The New York Times reported at the time.

In July this year, three men were convicted of the theft and sentenced to prison for up to 11 years. Most of the stolen coins remain unrecovered, however. Investigators did find lumps of gold on one suspect during his arrest, which indicated that some or all of the coins might have been melted down.