Thieves stole millions of dollars worth of jewerly from the museum of French glassmaker Lalique in an early-morning heist on Sunday, months after the brazen US$100-million daylight heist at the Louvre.
The museum was broken into in Wingen-sur-Morder in northeastern France around 5:30 a.m. local time and the thieves headed straight for the jewelry room, according to Agence France-Presse.
“Around twenty pieces of jewelery were stolen. The loss is currently being assessed but could amount to several million euros, likely close to four million,” a source told the outlet.
According to the Times of London, the masked thieves broke into six display cases while only being in the museum for 11 minutes.
The museum, dedicated to glassmaker René Lalique, said that it would be closed for several days because of the burglary, according to a statement on its website.
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Christian Dorschner, the mayor of Wingen-sur-Moder, told local newspaper Les Dernieres nouvelles d’Alsace that the thieves went straight to the jewelry room and only visited that room.
“All the alarms went off, just as they should. And then with the security company, apparently, there was a major failure on their part: they didn’t intervene right away, they didn’t inform the gendarmes,” Christian Dorschner said.
The museum took to Facebook to share a number of items that were stolen during the heist, including a woman-dragonfly with open wings pendant, created by René Lalique around 1898–1900.
“Following the terrible burglary the museum suffered, it is impossible to carry on as if nothing had happened. The investigation is ongoing,” the museum added.
The museum said that all of the missing items have been identified by the museum team and their descriptions have been passed on to the relevant authorities to assist with the search.
The robbery is the latest museum heist in France.
In October, municipal officials discovered that part of a display at the Maison des Lumières Denis Diderot (Denis Diderot House of Enlightenment), located in Langres, France, had disappeared.
Thieves broke into the Maison des Lumières Denis Diderot after breaking down the main gate of the Hôtel du Breuil-de-Saint-Germain, which houses the museum, the Washington Post reports.
The museum did not have any visitors present when its security noticed that a sliding door had been forced open and a display case containing gold and silver coins had been broken into, Pierrick White, a senior local official, told BFMTV.
The coins stolen — approximately 2,000 of them — were worth around €90,000 (C$147,000), the BBC reports.
The news of this other robbery came after the Louvre’s former director acknowledged a “terrible failure” at the Paris tourist attraction following the daylight crown jewel heist earlier in October.
Thieves took less than eight minutes to steal crown jewels valued at 88 million euros ($102 million) from the Louvre, in a weekend operation that stunned visitors, exposed glaring vulnerabilities and left one of France’s most symbolically charged collections in criminal hands.
Several suspects were later arrested, but the stolen pieces remain missing.
—with files from The Associated Press
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