PARIS (AP) — Workers at the Louvre Museum voted Monday to strike over working conditions and other complaints, dealing another blow to the Paris landmark and home of the “Mona Lisa” after an embarrassing jewelry heist in October.

The CFDT union said the vote was taken at a meeting of 400 workers on Monday morning and that they decided to strike for the day. Striking workers with flags, banners and placards blocked the museum’s iconic glass pyramid entrance.

The world’s most-visited museum didn’t open as scheduled and turned people away. An updated notice on the Louvre’s website said it was “exceptionally” closed for the day and that ticket holders would be reimbursed.

“It’s really sad, because I was really looking forward to this,” said Lindsey Hall, a bitterly disappointed would-be visitor from Sacramento, California. She had been planning to enjoy the museum’s huge collection of art and artifacts with a friend, describing it as “one of those life experiences you crave.”

“This is just an epic collection of art and something that every human should see,” she said. “I can see the other side of it, like if you are the person that works in the museum and how that can be, like day after day after day.”

The strike vote followed talks last week between labor unions and government officials including Culture Minister Rachida Dati. Labor leaders said the talks had not alleviated their concerns about staffing and financing for the museum that welcomes millions of visitors each year.

“Visiting the museum has become an obstacle course,” said Alexis Fritche, general secretary of the culture wing of the CFDT union.

For employees, the brazen daylight jewel heist crystallized long-standing concerns that crowding and thin staffing are undermining security and working conditions at the Louvre.

Police arrests subsequently snared the entire four-man team alleged to made off with $102 million worth of jewels. The gang used a basket lift to reach the Louvre’s facade, forced a window, smashed display cases and fled with pieces of the French crown jewels. A Senate inquiry released last week said the thieves escaped with barely 30 seconds to spare and pointed fingers of blame at broken cameras, outdated equipment, understaffed control rooms and poor coordination that initially sent police to the wrong location.

In a statement, the CFDT said employees want more staffing for security and to welcome visitors, improved working conditions, stable long-term budgets for the Louvre and leadership that “truly listens to staff.”

Yvan Navarro of the CGT union complained that staff numbers have continually decreased while visitor numbers have increased.

“People come to Paris to visit the museums. So the visitor numbers go up, the tariffs and the prices go up, because everything is becoming more expensive but the salaries and the numbers of staffers don’t go up so obviously you reach a point like today, a day of anger,” he said.

Labor leaders said the strike vote was unanimous. It wasn’t immediately clear whether the work stoppage will last longer than one day. The Louvre is closed on Tuesdays. Employees could meet again on Wednesday to decide whether to stay out or go back to work.

In their notice of open-ended strike action to Dati last week, the CFDT, CGT and Sud unions said the Louvre was in “crisis,” with insufficient resources and “increasingly deteriorated working conditions.”

The Culture Ministry said Sunday that it has tasked Philippe Jost, who oversaw reconstruction of Notre Dame Cathedral after its 2019 fire, with a mission to propose a deep reorganization of the Louvre following the findings of an administrative inquiry.

It said Jost will offer recommendations by the end of February. He will work with Louvre director Laurence des Cars, who previously described the heist as a “terrible failure.”

Thomas Adamson in Paris contributed.

PARIS, Dec 7 (Reuters) – A water leak last month damaged hundreds of books in the Egyptian antiquities department at the Louvre, underscoring the deteriorating state of the world’s most visited museum just weeks after a daring jewel heist exposed security flaws.

Specialist website La Tribune de l’Art reported that around 400 rare books were affected, blaming poor pipe conditions.

It said the department had long sought funds to protect the collection from such risks without success.

Le Louvre’s deputy administrator, Francis Steinbock, told BFM TV on Sunday the water pipe leak concerned one of the three rooms of the library of the Egyptian antiquities department.

“We have identified between 300 and 400 works, the count is ongoing,” he said, adding the books lost were “those consulted by Egyptologists but no precious books.”

He acknowledged the problem had been known for years and said repairs were scheduled for September 2026.

Four burglars made off in broad daylight with jewels worth $102 million on October 19, exposing glaring security gaps at Le Louvre.

In November, structural weaknesses prompted the partial closure of one of the gallery hosting Greek vases and offices.

A report published in October by France’s public audit body, known as the Cour des Comptes, said the museum’s inability to update its infrastructure was exacerbated by excessive spending on artwork.

PARIS (AP) — A man arrested by French police earlier this week is thought to be the fourth member of the team that stole France’s crown jewels from the Louvre Museum, the Paris prosecutor said Friday, meaning that the entire gang that carried out the brazen heist is now believed to have been caught.

Prosecutor Laure Beccuau, whose office is heading the investigation, said the 39-year-old man has a criminal record, with six previous convictions, including for receiving stolen goods, for which he was given a 2-month suspended prison sentence in 2010.

He has now been handed preliminary charges of robbery by an organized gang, punishable by 15 years imprisonment, and criminal conspiracy, which can carry a 10-year sentence if he is convicted for his suspected role in the stunning Oct. 19 theft at the world’s most-visited museum. The robbery gang’s haul of loot was worth an estimated 88 million euros ($102 million) — a monetary value that didn’t include the jewels’ huge historical value to France.

The prosecutor’s statement didn’t say what role, exactly, the man is thought to have played in the daylight heist, carried out with angle grinders, a freight lift and subterfuge, with robbers dressed as workers in bright vests.

Three other people also taken into police custody for questioning this week have been released without charge, the prosecutor said.

Police investigators are continuing their work “to locate the stolen jewels and to precisely determine each person’s role in this organized criminal group, as well as to clarify how the theft was planned and perpetrated,” she said.

The robbery is believed to have been carried out by a four-person team — with two breaking into the museum’s ornate Apollo Gallery where the jewels were displayed and then being whisked away on motorbikes by two associates who waited outside.

Three men, the robbery team’s other suspected members, were arrested in October and handed preliminary charges of theft by an organized gang and criminal conspiracy. DNA traces were found at the scene or on items linked to the robbery.

Police also arrested a woman in October. She faces preliminary charges of complicity in theft and criminal conspiracy. She is the longtime partner of one of the alleged robbers. The couple have children together and live in the northern suburbs of Paris, also home to other suspects.

The woman denied any involvement, her lawyer said.

The haul hasn’t been recovered. It includes a diamond-and-emerald necklace Napoleon gave to Empress Marie-Louise, jewels tied to 19th-century Queens Marie-Amélie and Hortense, and Empress Eugénie’s pearl-and-diamond tiara.

The robbery has focused attention on security at the Louvre. The museum’s director has acknowledged a ″terrible failure” and promised the installation of new surveillance cameras and anti-intrusion systems.

The thieves took less than eight minutes to force their way into the museum and leave, using a freight lift to reach one of the building’s windows. Footage from museum cameras showed that the two who broke into the Apollo Gallery used grinders to cut into jewelry display cases.

The emerald-set imperial crown of Napoleon III’s wife, Empress Eugénie, containing more than 1,300 diamonds, was later found outside the museum.

PARIS (AP) — The Paris prosecutor announced four more arrests Tuesday in connection with the stunning heist at the Louvre Museum in October by a gang that made off with $102 million worth of jewels.

The two men and two women taken into custody are from the Paris region and range in age from 31 to 40, said the prosecutor, Laure Beccuau, whose office is heading the investigation.

Her statement didn’t say what role they’re suspected of having played in the Oct. 19 theft. Police can hold them for questioning for 96 hours.

French media report that one of those arrested, a 39-year-old already known to police services, is believed to be the fourth member of the team thought to have carried out the daring daylight robbery and is from Aubervilliers, a suburb north of Paris other suspects have connections with.

The other three alleged members of the so-called “commando” team have been previously arrested and face preliminary charges of theft by an organized gang and criminal conspiracy. Their DNA has been found on the scene or on items linked to the robbery.

A woman arrested in October is accused of complicity.

The loot hasn’t been recovered. It includes a diamond-and-emerald necklace Napoleon gave to Empress Marie-Louise, jewels tied to 19th-century Queens Marie-Amélie and Hortense, and Empress Eugénie’s pearl-and-diamond tiara.

The robbery has focused attention on security at the Louvre, the world’s most-visited museum.

The thieves took less than eight minutes to force their way into the museum and leave, using a freight lift to reach the building’s window. Footage from museum cameras showed two broke into the ornate Apollo Gallery, cutting into the jewelry display cases with disc cutters and making off with the trove, while two riders on scooters whisked them away.

The emerald-set imperial crown of Napoleon III’s wife, Empress Eugénie, containing more than 1,300 diamonds, was later found outside the museum.

PARIS (AP) — When 15-year-old Pedro Elias Garzon Delvaux realized an Associated Press photo of him at the Louvre on the day of the crown jewels heist had drawn millions of views, his first instinct was not to rush online and unmask himself.

A fan of Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot who lives with his parents and grandfather in Rambouillet, west of Paris, Pedro decided to play along with the world’s suspense.

As theories swirled about the sharply dressed stranger in the “Fedora Man” shot — detective, insider, AI fake — he decided to stay silent and watch.

“I didn’t want to say immediately it was me,” he said. “With this photo there is a mystery, so you have to make it last.”

For his only in-person interview since that snap turned him into an international curiosity, he appeared for the AP cameras at his home much as he did that Sunday: in a fedora hat, Yves Saint Laurent waistcoat borrowed from his father, jacket chosen by his mother, neat tie, Tommy Hilfiger trousers and a restored, war-battered Russian watch.

The fedora, angled just so, is his homage to French Resistance hero Jean Moulin.

In person, he is a bright, amused teenager who wandered, by accident, into a global story.

The image that made him famous was meant to document a crime scene. Three police officers lean on a silver car blocking a Louvre entrance, hours after thieves carried out a daylight raid on French crown jewels.

To the right, a lone figure in a three-piece ensemble strides past; a flash of film noir in a modern-day manhunt.

The internet did the rest. “Fedora Man,” as users dubbed him, was cast as an old-school detective, an inside man, a Netflix pitch, or not human at all. Many were convinced he was AI-generated.

Pedro understood why. “In the photo, I’m dressed more in the 1940s, and we are in 2025,” he said. “There is a contrast.”

Even some relatives and friends hesitated until they spotted his mother in the background. Only then were they sure: The internet’s favorite fake detective was a real boy.

The real story was simple. Pedro, his mother and grandfather had come to visit the Louvre.

“We wanted to go to the Louvre, but it was closed,” he said. “We didn’t know there was a heist.”

They asked officers why the gates were shut. Seconds later, AP photographer Thibault Camus, documenting the security cordon, caught Pedro midstride.

“When the picture was taken, I didn’t know,” Pedro said. “I was just passing through.”

Four days later, an acquaintance messaged: Is that you?

“She told me there were 5 million views,” he said. “I was a bit surprised.” Then his mother called to say he was in The New York Times. “It’s not every day,” he said. Cousins in Colombia, friends in Austria, family friends and classmates followed with screenshots and calls.

“People said, ‘You’ve become a star,’” he said. “I was astonished that just with one photo you can become viral in a few days.”

The look that jolted tens of millions is not a costume whipped up for a museum trip. Pedro began dressing this way less than a year ago, inspired by 20th-century history and black-and-white images of suited statesmen and fictional detectives.

“I like to be chic,” he said. “I go to school like this.”

In a sea of hoodies and sneakers, he shows up in a riff on a three-piece suit. And the hat? No, that’s its own ritual. The fedora is reserved for weekends, holidays and museum visits.

At his no-uniform school, his style has already started to spread. “One of my friends came this week with a tie,” he said.

He understands why people projected a whole sleuth character onto him: improbable heist, improbable detective. He loves Poirot (“very elegant”), and likes the idea that an unusual crime calls for someone who looks unusual. “When something unusual happens, you don’t imagine a normal detective,” he said. “You imagine someone different.”

That instinct fits the world he comes from. His mother, Félicité Garzon Delvaux, grew up in an 18th-century museum-palace, daughter of a curator and a performer, and regularly takes her son to exhibits.

“Art and museums are living spaces,” she said. “Life without art is not life.”

For Pedro, art and imagery were part of everyday life. So when millions projected stories onto a single frame of him in a fedora beside armed police at the Louvre, he recognized the power of an image and let the myth breathe before stepping forward.

He stayed silent for several days, then switched his Instagram from private to public.

“People had to try to find who I am,” he said. “Then journalists came, and I told them my age. They were extremely surprised.”

He is relaxed about whatever comes next. “I’m waiting for people to contact me for films,” he said, grinning. “That would be very funny.”

In a story of theft and security lapses, “Fedora Man” is a gentler counterpoint: A teenager who believes art, style and a good mystery belong to ordinary life. One photo turned him into a symbol. Meeting him confirms he is, reassuringly, real.

“I’m a star,” he says — less brag than experiment, as if he’s trying on the words the way he tries on a hat. “I’ll keep dressing like this. It’s my style.”

This makes a password like “1234” look genius.

An employee of the Louvre in Paris, France, has revealed the password of the museum’s surveillance system at the time of the jewelry heist last month, and it’s pretty bad.

The password was “Louvre,” a staffer with knowledge of the system told ABC News Wednesday.

Yup, you read that right: “Louvre.”

The French outlet Libération first reported on the password, citing confidential documents. The outlet claims the password was initially unearthed by France’s National Cybersecurity Agency during an audit in 2014. And we suppose no one bothered to update it since then with something with more characters, numbers and symbols, like “v0ulez-v0u$ c0ucher @vec m0i.”

It should be noted that it is unclear if the password ever came into play during last month’s heist — in which thieves stole $102 million in Napoleonic jewels in minutes and while tourists were inside by using a basket lift, forcing open a window and going hog wild in the museum’s Apollo Gallery.

But the fun tidbit of information comes amid concerns surrounding the famed institution’s security, with The Associated Press reporting at the time of the cartoonishly executed robbery that Louvre employees were complaining of worker and security understaffing. Paris police have even acknowledged that the security at the Louvre was pretty outdated.

During testimony before a French Senate committee last month, Laurence des Cars, the president and director of the Louvre, said that the only camera installed outside the Apollo Gallery did not capture footage of the window where the thieves broke in and exited, per ABC News. Des Cars said the museum’s perimeter security was weak “due to underinvestment.”

He added that he was “appalled” by the museum’s security when he took the role in 2021, and that it has been one of his “top priorities.”

As the investigation into the theft churns on, authorities have yet to find the missing jewels, even though four suspects have been charged in connection with the robbery.

PARIS (AP) — French police acknowledged major gaps in the Louvre’s defenses on Wednesday — turning this month’s dazzling daylight theft into a national reckoning over how France protects its treasures.

Paris Police Chief Patrice Faure told Senate lawmakers that aging systems and slow-moving fixes left weak seams in the world’s most-visited museum.

“A technological step has not been taken,” he said, noting parts of the video network are even still analog, producing lower-quality images that are slow to share in real time.

A long-promised revamp — a $93 million project requiring roughly 60 kilometers (37 miles) of new cabling — “will not be finished before 2029–2030,” he said.

Faure also disclosed that the Louvre’s authorization to operate its security cameras quietly expired in July and wasn’t renewed — a paperwork lapse that some see as a symbol of broader negligence after thieves forced a window to the Apollo Gallery, cut into cases with power tools and fled with eight pieces of the French crown jewels within minutes while tourists were inside.

“Officers arrived extremely fast,” Faure said, but he added the lag occurred earlier in the chain — from first detection, to museum security, to the emergency line, to police command.

Faure and his team said the first alert to police came not from the Louvre’s alarms but from a cyclist outside who dialed the emergency line after seeing helmeted men with a basket lift.

Officials say two suspects were arrested over the weekend, including one stopped at Charles-de-Gaulle Airport as he tried to leave France. Under French rules for organized theft, custody can run up to 96 hours; that limit expires late Wednesday, when prosecutors must charge the suspects, release them, or seek a judge’s extension. The Louvre values the eight stolen pieces at about $102 million. None has been confirmed recovered.

The theft has also exposed an insurance blind spot: officials say the jewels were not privately insured. The French state self-insures its national museums, because premiums for covering priceless heritage are astronomically high — meaning the Louvre will receive no payout for the loss. The financial blow, like the cultural wound, is total.

Faure pushed back on quick fixes. He rejected calls for a permanent police post inside the palace-museum, warning it would set an unworkable precedent and do little against fast, mobile crews. “I am firmly opposed,” he said. “The issue is not a guard at a door; it is speeding the chain of alert.”

He urged lawmakers to authorize tools currently off-limits: AI-based anomaly detection and object tracking (not facial recognition) to flag suspicious movements and follow scooters or gear across city cameras in real time.

The Oct. 19 heist was swift and simple. In the morning rush, thieves reached the jewel gallery near streetside windows, cut through reinforced cases and vanished in minutes. Former bank robber David Desclos told the AP the operation was textbook and vulnerabilities were glaringly obvious in the layout of the gallery.

Culture Minister Rachida Dati, under pressure, has stayed defensive — refusing the Louvre director’s resignation and insisting alarms worked while acknowledging “security gaps did exist.” She has kept details to a minimum, citing ongoing investigations.

The reckoning lands at a museum already under strain. In June, the Louvre shut in a spontaneous staff strike — including security agents — over unmanageable crowds, chronic understaffing and “untenable” conditions. Unions say mass tourism and construction pinch points create blind spots, a vulnerability underscored by thieves who rolled a basket lift to the Seine-facing façade and reached a hall displaying the crown jewels.

Faure said police will now track surveillance-permit deadlines across institutions to prevent repeats of the July lapse. But he stressed the larger fix is disruptive and slow: ripping out and rebuilding core systems while the palace stays open, and updating the law so police can act on suspicious movement in real time — before a scooter disappears into Paris traffic and diamonds into history.

Experts fear the stolen pieces may already be broken down and stones recut to erase their past — a prospect that adds urgency to France’s debate over how it guards what the world comes to see.

PARIS (AP) — Two suspects were arrested in connection with the theft of crown jewels from Paris’ Louvre museum, justice and police officials said Sunday, a week after the heist that stunned the world and sparked a massive manhunt.

The Paris prosecutor said that investigators made arrests Saturday evening, adding that one of the men taken into custody was preparing to leave the country from Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport.

French media BFM TV and Le Parisien newspaper earlier reported that two suspects had been arrested and taken into custody. Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau did not confirm the number of arrests and did not say whether any jewels had been recovered.

A police official, who was not authorized to speak publicly about the ongoing case, told The Associated Press that two men in their 30s, both known to police, were taken into custody. He said one suspect was arrested as he attempted to board a plane bound for Algeria. The official added that one of the suspects was identified through DNA traces. Beccuau said earlier this week that forensics experts were analyzing 150 samples at the scene.

The suspects can be held in police custody up to 96 hours.

Thieves took less than eight minutes last Sunday morning to steal jewels valued at 88 million euros ($102 million) from the world’s most-visited museum. French officials described how the intruders used a basket lift to scale the Louvre’s façade, forced open a window, smashed display cases and fled. The museum’s director called the incident a “terrible failure.”

Beccuau said investigators from a special police unit in charge of armed robberies, serious burglaries and art thefts made the arrests. In her statement, she rued the premature leak of information, saying it could hinder the work of over 100 investigators “mobilized to recover the stolen jewels and apprehend all of the perpetrators.” Beccuau said further details will be unveiled after the suspects’ custody period ends.

French Interior Minister Laurent Nunez praised “the investigators who have worked tirelessly, just as I asked them to, and who have always had my full confidence.”

The Louvre reopened earlier this week after one of the highest-profile museum thefts of the century stunned the world with its audacity and scale.

The thieves slipped in and out, making off with some of France’s crown jewels — a cultural wound that some compared to the burning of Notre Dame Cathedral in 2019.

The thieves escaped with a total of eight objects, including a sapphire diadem, necklace and single earring from a set linked to 19th-century queens Marie-Amélie and Hortense.

They also took an emerald necklace and earrings tied to Empress Marie-Louise, Napoleon Bonaparte’s second wife, as well as a reliquary brooch. Empress Eugénie’s diamond diadem and her large corsage-bow brooch — an imperial ensemble of rare craftsmanship — were also part of the loot.

One piece — Eugénie’s emerald-set imperial crown with more than 1,300 diamonds — was later found outside the museum, damaged but repairable.

News of the arrests was met with relief by Louvre visitors and passersby on Sunday.

“It’s important for our heritage. A week later, it does feel a bit late, we wonder how this could even happen — but it was important that the guys were caught,” said Freddy Jacquemet.

“I think the main thing now is whether they can recover the jewels,” added Diana Ramirez. “That’s what really matters.”

Petrequin reported from London.

PARIS (AP) — The glittering sapphires, emeralds, and diamonds that once adorned France’s royals could well be gone forever, experts said Tuesday after a brazen, four-minute heist in broad daylight left the nation stunned and the government struggling to explain a new debacle at the Louvre.

Each stolen piece — an emerald necklace and earrings, two crowns, two brooches, a sapphire necklace and a single earring — represents the pinnacle of 19th century “haute joaillerie,” or fine jewelry. But for the royals, they were more than decoration. The pieces were political statements of France’s wealth, power and cultural import. And they are so significant that they were among the treasures saved from the government’s 1887 auction of most royal jewels.

Laure Beccuau, the Paris prosecutor whose office is leading the investigation, said Tuesday that in monetary terms, the stolen jewelry is worth an estimated $102 million (88 million euros) but also noted that the estimate doesn’t include historical value. About 100 investigators are now involved in the police hunt for the suspects and the gems, she said.

The theft of the crown jewels left the French government scrambling — again — to explain the latest embarrassment at the Louvre, which is plagued by overcrowding and outdated facilities. Activists in 2024 threw a can of soup at the Mona Lisa. And in June, the museum was brought to a halt by its own striking staff, who complained about mass tourism. President Emmanuel Macron has announced that the Mona Lisa, stolen by a former museum worker in 1911 and recovered two years later, will get its own room under a major renovation.

Now the sparkling jewels, artifacts of a French culture of long ago, are likely being secretly dismantled and sold off in a rush as individual pieces that may or may not be identifiable as part of the French crown jewels, experts said.

“It’s extremely unlikely these jewels will ever be retrieved and seen again,” said Tobias Kormind, managing director of 77 Diamonds, a major European diamond jeweler, said in a statement. “If these gems are broken up and sold off, they will, in effect, vanish from history and be lost to the world forever.”

At once intimate and public, crown jewels are kept secured from the Tower of London to Tokyo’s Imperial Palace as visual symbols of national identities.

In the Louvre’s case, the gems were stolen from the former palace’s gilded Apollo Gallery, itself a work of art rendered in “sun, gold and diamonds,” per the museum’s website. Interior Minister Laurent Nunez said more than 60 police investigators are involved in the manhunt for the four robbery suspects. The thieves were divided into two pairs, with two people aboard a truck with a cherry picker they used to climb up to the gallery, Nunez said. Photos showed the equipment’s ladder reaching to the floor above street level.

Taken, officials said, were eight pieces, part of a collection whose origin as crown jewels date back to the 16th century when King Francis I decreed that they belonged to the state. The Paris prosecutor’s office, leading the investigation, said that two men with bright yellow jackets broke into the gallery at 9:34 a.m. — half an hour past opening time — and left the room at 9:38 a.m. before fleeing on two motorbikes.

The missing pieces include two crowns, or diadems. One, given by Emperor Napoleon III to the Empress Eugenie in 1853 to celebrate their wedding, holds more than 200 pearls and nearly 2,000 diamonds. The second is a starry sapphire-and-diamond headpiece — and also a necklace and single earring— worn by, among others, Queen Marie-Amelie, French authorities said.

Also stolen: a necklace of dozens of emeralds and more than 1,000 diamonds that was a wedding gift from Napoleon Bonaparte to his second wife, Marie-Louise of Austria, in 1810. The matching earrings also were stolen. The thieves also made off with a reliquary brooch and a large bodice bow worn by Empress Eugenie — both pieces diamond-encrusted, French officials said.

The robbers dropped or abandoned a hefty ninth piece, which was damaged: a crown adorned with gold eagles, 1,354 diamonds and 56 emeralds, worn by Empress Eugenie.

Left untouched were other items in the crown jewel collection, which before the heist included 23 jewels, according to the Louvre. Remaining, for example, is the plum-sized Regent, a white diamond said to be the largest of its kind in Europe.

Beyond the monetary value of the stolen jewels, the emotional loss is keenly felt and easier to measure. Many have described France’s failure to secure its most precious items as a wounding blow to national pride.

“These are family souvenirs that have been taken from the French,” conservative lawmaker Maxime Michelet said in Parliament on Tuesday, quizzing the government about security at the Louvre and other cultural sites.

“Empress Eugenie’s crown — stolen, then dropped and found broken in the gutter, has become the symbol of the decline of a nation that used to be so admired,” Michelet said. “It is shameful for our country, incapable of guaranteeing the security of the world’s largest museum.”

The theft Sunday was not the first Louvre heist in recent years. But it stood out for its forethought, speed and almost cinematic quality as one of the highest-profile museum thefts in living memory. In fact, it echoed the fictional theft from the Louvre of a royal crown by a “gentleman thief” in the French television show “Lupin” — which in turn is based on a 1905 series of stories.

The romance of such a theft is mostly a creation of showbiz, according to one theft investigator. Christopher A. Marinello, a lawyer with Art Recovery International, said he’s never seen a “theft-to-order” by some shadowy secret collector.

“These criminals are just looking to steal whatever they can,” Marinello said. “They chose this room because it was close to a window. They chose these jewels because they figured that they could break them apart, take out the settings, take out the diamonds and the sapphires and the emeralds” overseas to “a dodgy dealer that’s willing to recut them and no one would ever know what they did.”

What happens now is a race against time both for the French authorities hunting the thieves and for the perpetrators themselves, who will have a hard time finding buyers for the pieces in all their royal glory.

“Nobody will touch these objects. They are too famous. It’s too hot. If you get caught you will end up in prison,” said Dutch art sleuth Arthur Brand. “You cannot sell them, you cannot leave them to your children.”

Kellman reported from London. Associated Press writer Mike Corder contributed from The Hague, Netherlands.