Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you will have heard about the heist of the century: the theft of the Louvre’s crown jewels, stolen right from the heart of France’s capital city in broad daylight. Eight pieces were stolen in just seven minutes, worth a total of £76m. Despite four arrests, the jewels have not yet been recovered, and may never be.
The headlines were as dramatic as expected: CNN dubbed the debacle a “national disaster”, and the BBC called it “France’s most shocking theft”. The popular art museum has been disgraced and is now facing criticism from all angles. Most damning of all were the security failures which amounted to embarrassing rookie errors.
The camera, for instance, was simply pointing away from the thieves’ entry point and didn’t catch them climbing in through the balcony. Their financial choices have also been scrutinised, especially the choice to buy so many new, expensive artworks over the past decades, leaving little room in the budget for important things like... security. But while the Louvre picks up the pieces, the heist has exposed a historical irony that has sparked debate.
France’s own history of colonial theft has been under scrutiny in recent years: in 2021, France returned 26 treasures stolen during the colonial period back to Benin, and in 2025 returned three colonial-era human skulls to Madagascar. In this climate, it’s easy to see how the items that were stolen were not apolitical objects, but rather important relics of an uncomfortable history. The stolen artefacts were jewellery which once belonged to the upper echelons of society, those who greatly benefited from colonialism, including Napoleon III’s wife Empress Eugénie.
While the jewellery was made in France, the origins of the jewels were extracted from around the world. The jewellery’s emeralds can be traced back to Colombia; the diamonds can be traced back to Brazil and India; the pearls can be traced back to the Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean; and the sapphires to Sri Lanka. There is very little information about where exactly the jewels came from, but expert Pascal Blanchard told AP News that they were “products of colonial production” and “traded under the legal conditions... of the time”, including, of course, slavery.
But did the thieves pull off this stunt as a political statement in an effort to right the historical wrongs? Absolutely not. While it’s understandable that some are happy to bask for a minute in the karmic retribution of it all, it is delusional to romanticise this heist as some kind of Robin Hood–style statement.
Those who suffered in the extraction of the jewels will never be compensated, and we shouldn’t celebrate in the removal of artefacts from a national art museum for profit. That being said, rather than crying over stolen jewels, we should take this opportunity to demand a commitment to historical justice from our museums.