The Louvre Museum has reopened to the public after the robbery that took place on Sunday morning.

The attackers managed to enter the museum, which is located in the heart of Paris, and stole precious jewels of the French Crown.

They entered the Louvre using a mobile crane mounted on a van to reach the Hall of Apollo.

The four masked burglars approached from the southwest side of the museum on the banks of the Seine.

They climbed into the second-story windows with a crane-like vehicle with a lifting platform, chainsawed the bars from the windows and entered the “Apollo Room” where, among other things, the jewels were kept.

Eight of the nine stolen items are still missing, including a tiara and necklace worn by Queen Marie-Amelie and Queen Hortense.

Police manhunt

Police have launched a manhunt for the four robbers, who armed with power tools carried out a highly professional raid at the world’s busiest museum before escaping on a scooter, but so far nothing has been found.

Authorities are pinning their hopes on identifying the robbers on a yellow vest with traces of DNA, abandoned near the Louvre.

According to the Paris prosecutor, Laure Beko, she did not rule out the possibility that there was an accomplice inside the Louvre Museum.

The damage was estimated by the curator of the Louvre at 88 million euros, but the state will not be compensated for the jewels stolen from the Louvre, as the museum, like most national institutions, does not have private insurance.

The director is expected to give an explanation

The director of the Louvre, who has not spoken since Sunday, is expected today to explain to French parliamentarians how burglars managed to steal the crown jewels from the Paris museum, which reopened its doors this morning.

After three days with the doors closed, including Tuesday (yesterday), the day of the week it remains closed, the world’s busiest museum reopened today at 09:00 (10:00 Greek time).

“We’ve been waiting a long time for it to open. We had a reservation for today, we wouldn’t have the chance to come again,” said Fani happily, who came from Montpellier (southern France) with her daughter.

The investigation continues in an attempt to locate the four burglars and their unimaginable loot, which was stolen from the famous “Apollo” hall. The theft caused a great sensation in France and abroad and a public communication storm about the protection of the works of the Louvre.

The investigation is “progressing,” Interior Minister Laurent Nunes told CNews television and Europe 1 radio station, adding that “more than a hundred investigators” have been mobilized.

“I have every certainty (…) that we will find the perpetrators,” he said.

The estimate makes the heist one of the most significant art thefts in decades, but the $88 million figure falls well short of the 1990 burglary of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, which was valued at at least half a million dollars.

In the front row from Sunday, Culture Minister Rashida Dati will let Louvre president-director Laurence de Carre, who has yet to make a public statement about the theft, speak today.

He will speak at 16:30 (15:30 Greek time) to the culture committee of the Senate, the upper house of the French parliament.

It will be the moment of truth for her, who in May 2021 became the first female head of the Louvre, a world-renowned museum that welcomed nine million visitors in 2024, of which 80% were foreigners.

According to the conservative newspaper Le Figaro, de Carre submitted her resignation after the theft but it was not accepted and she received the support of President Emmanuel Macron.

The Louvre, contacted by AFP, did not want to comment on these statements.

De Carre is expected to be questioned about the security conditions in the Apollo room which houses the royal collection of Crown jewels and diamonds, numbering around 800 pieces.

The hall’s doors remain closed today, with three gray signs blocking the view and Louvre staff demanding that visitors continue on their way.

Speaking to MPs, Minister Rashida Dati ruled out “any security vulnerability inside” the museum as the mechanisms “worked”. Instead he questioned the lack of security “on the public street”, which allowed the burglars to install a lift and enter through a window.

A right-wing candidate for Paris mayor in next March’s municipal elections, she admitted that “the safety of works of art has been underestimated for too long”. “We put more emphasis on public safety,” he said.

In a preliminary report consulted yesterday, Monday, the Agence France-Presse, the Court of Auditors that controls the use of public money, spoke of a “delay in the development of equipment intended to ensure the protection of the works” of the museum.

Laurence de Carr has a long experience in museums.

Before the Louvre, this specialist in 19th- and early 20th-century art was president of Paris’ Musée d’Orsay, as well as the Musée Orangerie, which displays works of Impressionist and post-Impressionist art, including Monet’s enormous Water Lilies.