Heists and heritage: The Louvre robbery and the paradox of stolen museum objects
The heist
On October 19, 2025, at about 9:30 a.m., a group of masked thieves used a ladder attached to a truck to enter the Louvre Museum. Within four minutes, they had removed around $100 million worth of jewels from display cases, and made their getaway on scooters. For many, the news was captivating—descriptions of the scene sounded like something of fiction, pulled directly from the Ocean’s movies series, or, even more fittingly, the French TV show Lupin.
The stolen items were eight pieces from France’s Crown Jewels, jewelry once owned by Napoleon Bonaparte and worn by his wives and other nineteenth-century royals. The jewelry is part of a collection that represents all that’s left of France’s Crown Jewels, as many were stolen after the French Revolution. In France, the theft was mourned as a deep national tragedy, with Justice Minster Gérald Darmanin suggesting the loss was felt collectively by “the French people, [who] for the most part, feel as though they have been robbed.”
The hypocrisy
While the heist garnered intense media coverage and strong reactions, the standard narrative surrounding the event generally obscures an important paradox—or, more pointedly, hypocrisy—in the story. How many of the objects in the Louvre, including many of the precious stones found in the jewels taken in the heist, were obtained through means that—while perhaps not as dramatic as the recent heist—could also be considered theft? The jewels illustrate the tension behind many museum displays. Yes, they were crafted into jewelry in France. But the raw gems that make up the jewels? They are certainly not French, and they were almost certainly acquired through colonial-era systems of exploitation. In fact, researchers quickly determined that the raw materials in the stolen jewels came from far-flung colonial outposts: Sri Lanka, India, Brazil, the Persian Gulf, and Colombia. Although we don’t have details about how the gems were extracted, we know plenty about the exploitation of both raw materials and people during colonialism. The gems, like many objects in museums are “entangled with violent, exploitative, colonial histories.”
The Louvre acknowledges the messy history of many objects in its museum, and it has plans to investigate collection pieces “that hail from countries formerly under French control, such as Algeria, Tunisia, Syria and Lebanon,” including pieces that “were obtained through looting or colonial violence.” Yet, these plans offer little evidence that much has changed, and French laws make the process especially challenging, as the French Parliament must make a special exception to return state-held objects.
And of course, the Louvre is far from alone in housing items that can be considered stolen. Shimrit Lee, author of Decolonize Museums, notes that “it is impossible to find a Western museum that doesn’t hold some amount of cultural material from Africa, Asia, Oceania, or Native America.” One of the worst offenders is the British Museum—not surprising considering its colonial past. To name just a few of the objects that are currently in contention: the Rosetta Stone, originally from Egypt; the Koh-i-Noor diamond, originally from India; the Benin Bronzes, originally from the Kingdom of Benin (current-day Nigeria);1 and the Elgin Marbles, originally from Greece.
Many of these institutions argue that they should not have to return items that were procured legally at the time, under colonial rule. The other often-used argument against repatriation is that the items are safer where they are, as opposed to countries that may be experiencing economic or political instability. The recent incident at the Louvre, among other recent examples of damage, theft, and vandalism in well-known institutions, shows the weakness of that argument.
The historical context
Your students may be interested and curious about the Louvre heist—it’s an entertaining tale that’s still evolving today. But widening the story and the perspective to include questions about how and why an institution like the Louvre holds such tremendously valuable objects in the first place, is important in helping students think about the historical context behind institutions like these—context that is rarely part of the public narrative around museums.
The storing and display of important objects against the wishes of the community from which they came is a topic explored in OER Project’s Preserving the Past, with a specific focus on the Pueblo communities of current-day New Mexico. In this video, Brian Vallo, a former governor of Acoma Pueblo with an extensive background in cultural heritage stewardship and preservation, points out how “problematic” it is “when house blocks or ceremonial chambers have been totally desecrated, when those items that were planted by or left by our ancestors for a reason are excavated and now sitting in storage, in museums, and universities, or in private collections.”
Vallo has worked with museums around the United States to encourage better collaboration between these institutions and Native American communities. He helped repatriate remains from museums in Finland and France—illustrating just how far away from their original resting place these remains have been taken. As Vallo bluntly states, “My thinking is that, if it was anyone else, I don’t think any of us would like the idea of our family members being stripped from their graves, along with everything special that was planted with them.” This quote powerfully places the issue in a context that will resonate with students.
The Museum of Stolen Objects
For a hands-on exploration that allows students to dig more deeply into the issue of cultural property theft, we encourage you to explore UNESCO’s Virtual Museum of Stolen Cultural Objects. The virtual gallery displays objects that have been stolen from around the world. The goal is to raise awareness of the issue, with the hope of reducing the number of objects in its gallery through return and restitution.
The site is interactive, allowing users to browse by region, and then learn about the history of each stolen object. To provide structure to students’ exploration, we recommend giving them 10 minutes to explore. Then, have them pick one item and answer the following questions:
- Where is the object from?
- How was it taken?
- What is the cultural significance of this object?
- What does it mean for this community that the object is missing?
- While the objects in the virtual museum are missing, there are objects in real museums that are considered stolen. (If you’ve shared Preserving the Past with your class, this is a great connection.) Do you think it’s worse for an object to be missing, or displayed in a museum without permission of the community from which it came?
- When do you think it is OK for a museum to have objects from another community?
For a real-life example of what it might look like to address these issues, we’ll again turn to Egypt, and the recently opened Grand Egyptian Museum. The opening of the museum is not just about drawing tourists and showcasing treasures in a spectacular location within sight of the Great Pyramids of Giza. It’s also about elevating the demand that Egypt’s most treasured antiquities belong in Egypt, rather than in European museums. As one visitor told The New York Times, “It seems wrong to me that we should have to travel to a different country to see our own heritage. They are ours—they’re our identity.” Or, as Egyptologist Bassa El Shamaa more bluntly stated, “Hello! We need our stuff back—especially from the Louvre.” Among other objects, the Louvre holds the Dendera Zodiac, a precious object that was extracted from Egypt in 1821.
Which brings us back to the Louvre heist. If recovered, should the stolen jewels be included in the Virtual Museum of Stolen Objects? The stolen jewels are very much a part of France’s cultural heritage. But the museum also knowingly houses objects that were taken without permission and are part of other communities’ cultural heritage. What do we do with this conundrum? Critics of museums suggest one approach is simple honesty—museums should be more open about where items came from, how they arrived at the museum, and who might have suffered in the process. It’s a great discussion for your classroom, and a reminder that there’s always more to the news than the headlines.
1. The Benin Bronzes are slowly being returned, although not without challenge and controversy. See: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/09/arts/design/benin-bronzes-returned-nigeria