Louvre president and director Laurence de Carre wants a police station “inside the museum”, she told the Senate today, three days after a spectacular heist in which historic jewels were stolen.

“I would like to ask the interior ministry to look into whether setting up a police station inside the museum would be feasible,” the Louvre’s director told the Senate’s culture committee in her first public statement since Sunday’s theft, which sparked a heated debate over the protection of Louvre works.

Among other security measures being considered “in the short term”, Laurence de Carre cited “the security of the countries in the immediate vicinity of the Louvre, especially the road surface”.

“I’m thinking, for example, of machines that define distances” to prevent “vehicles from parking” next to the museum, he explained.

When asked if “all the alarms” went off, he replied: “absolutely.”

“The (surveillance) video cameras worked inside,” he continued.

Asked again about outdoor video surveillance, he replied: “That’s our weakness.”

“We didn’t detect early enough that the thieves had arrived,” he admitted. “Weaknesses in our perimeter protection are known and identified,” Carr said.

The Louvre’s exterior video surveillance system is “very inadequate” and did not cover the balcony through which the robbers broke in, Carr said.

“There are some cameras around the perimeter but they are outdated, the equipment is very inadequate, it doesn’t cover all the facades of the Louvre, and unfortunately the side of the Apollo room” where the theft took place, “the only camera is placed to the west, so it didn’t cover the balcony from which the break-in took place,” said Carr, assuring that the future security plan will cover “all facades”.

The Louvre theft is a “tremendous trauma,” he said.

“This theft wounds our museum in its deepest mission, there is absolutely no question for me to avoid or adopt a position of denial,” she added in her first public statement since the theft on Sunday.

“Despite our efforts, despite our hard work every day, we failed,” he continued.

The president of the world’s most visited museum said she did not want to “let it be believed that this theft was a fateful thing to do”.

“I have not stopped since I took office in September 2021 to draw the attention of our supervisory authority, the national delegation and the media to the state of deterioration and general disrepair of the Louvre, its buildings and its structures.”

The president of the Louvre then returned to the schedule of events and the first “technical and organizational” measures required.

In the long term, the director of the Louvre spoke of the measures foreseen in the security plan of the museum, or the “guideline of security equipment”, namely the doubling of the “number of cameras in the 370 hectares in which the Louvre extends and its surrounding areas” and the modernization of the “video surveillance and intrusion detection system”.

The director of the museum assured the members of the Senate that there was no “delay” in the implementation of this plan.

“I disagree with the information contained in the preliminary report of the Court of Auditors,” he said.

The Court of Auditors, which looked at the period between 2019 and 2024, spoke of a “continuing delay” in this area.