Armed soldiers patrolled around the famed glass pyramid entrance, while evacuated visitors, tourists and passersby were kept at a distance behind police tape.
It was “like a Hollywood movie”, American tourist Talia Ocampo told AFP.
It was “crazy” and “something we won’t forget”.
“We could not go to the Louvre because there was a robbery,” she said.
French authorities say four men robbed the Louvre’s Apollo Gallery containing France’s crown jewels, wearing masks to hide their faces and using high-powered scooters to escape, the prosecutor, Laure Beccuau, told BFMTV television.
The robbers used a powered, extendable ladder of the sort used to hoist furniture into buildings to get into a gilded gallery housing the crown jewels, sources and officials said.
The 19th-century crown of Empress Eugenie, the wife of Napoleon III, was found broken near the museum afterwards, a source following the robbery said, asking to remain anonymous because they were not authorised to speak to the media.
The crown, featuring golden eagles, is covered in 1354 diamonds and 56 emeralds, according to the museum’s website.
Robbers stole – but dropped – the crown of the Empress Eugenie. Photo / Stephane de Sakutin, AFP
‘Unsellable’
Interior Minister Laurent Nunez said thieves had used the furniture hoist to steal priceless items from two displays in the museum’s Galerie d’Apollon (Apollo’s Gallery).
It was not immediately clear what other items were taken.
Pieces on display in the gallery also include three historical diamonds – the Regent, the Sancy and the Hortensia – as well as an emerald-and-diamond necklace that Napoleon gave his wife, Empress Marie Louise, it said.
The thieves arrived between 9.30 and 9.40am (8.30 and 8.40pm NZT), the source following the case said, shortly after the museum opened at 9am.
A separate police source said the robbers drew up on a scooter armed with angle grinders and used the hoist to get inside the Louvre.
A witness named Samir, who was riding a bicycle nearby at the time, told the TF1 news outlet that he saw two men “get on the hoist, break the window and enter… it took 30 seconds”.
He said he saw four of them leave on scooters, and he called the police.
The brazen robbery happened just 800 metres from Paris police headquarters.
The Paris prosecutor’s office said the value of the hoard was still being estimated.
The Louvre’s management told AFP it closed because it wanted to “preserve traces and clues for the investigation”.
The director of the Drouot auction house told the LCI broadcaster that he feared the jewels would be broken down into gems and precious metal to be sold, as they would be “completely unsellable in their current state”.
‘Great vulnerability’
The Louvre used to be the seat of French kings until Louis XIV abandoned it for Versailles in the late 1600s.
It is the world’s most visited museum, last year welcoming nine million people to its extensive hallways and galleries.
Nunez, the capital’s former police chief who became interior minister last week, said he was aware of “a great vulnerability” in museum security in France.
Last month, criminals used an angle grinder to break into Paris’ Natural History Museum, making off with gold samples worth €600,000 ($1.2m)
Thieves earlier in the month stole two dishes and a vase from a museum in the central city of Limoges, with losses estimated at €6.5m.
Last year, four thieves stole snuffboxes and other artifacts from another Paris museum, breaking into a display case with axes and baseball bats.
But thefts from the Louvre have been rarer.
A painting by French painter Camille Corot disappeared from the museum in 1998 and has never been found.
In 1911, an Italian worker at the museum stole the Mona Lisa, but it was recovered and today sits behind security glass.
French President Emmanuel Macron in January pledged the Louvre would be redesigned after its director voiced alarm about dire conditions inside.
Dati said on Sunday that new security measures would be part of the renovation plan.
– Agence France-Presse