Louvre: Still no trace of the stolen crown jewels

The Apollon Room in the Louvre is once again teeming with visitors. At the end of the impressive, 60 meter long hall is the window with the balcony that went around the world. On a Sunday morning at 9:34 a.m., the two Louvre burglars pushed their way through one of the glass openings. A year later, most visitors to the Louvre pass by the window without paying attention. Only a few French young people from the city of Tours stop and know: "It was on TV back then and was covered by all the media."

And what's going through their minds now, right at the crime scene back then? "It happened very quickly. Before it was full here and now it's empty." In fact, there is not a single display case left in the shiny gold Apollon Hall.

Soon extra room for remaining jewels

A year later, the security measures around the Apollon Hall have been visibly improved. There is now a thick iron grille in front of the famous window with a balcony - just like it was 20 years ago. A modern camera is visible from the outside of the repaired window itself. At the bottom of the road leading to the Seine, a corrugated iron fence was erected, about five meters high and topped with extra-sharp barbed wire.

Nevertheless, the other crown jewels from the Apollon Hall that were not stolen will no longer be exhibited there for the time being. The new Louvre director is playing it safe. Christophe Leribault at the reopening of the hall in July: "As far as the jewels themselves are concerned, the diamond Le Régent for example, we now have to create a highly secured extra room. It will take some time before we can show the jewels."

Too many bankruptcies, bad luck and mishaps

Leribault, 63, has been in office since February. His predecessor Laurence des Cars had to leave because the Louvre, the largest museum in the world, suddenly only stood for bankruptcies, bad luck and mishaps.

First there was the spectacular Louvre coup, then there was water damage, ceilings that threatened to collapse, weeks of strikes and yet another large-scale ticket fraud. In front of a Senate commission in the summer, the new Louvre director had to admit that despite all efforts, the museum remained in an extremely critical condition: "The Louvre is at the end of its tether," said the new director literally.

A new project called "Louvre Nouvelle Renaissance" is intended to give the aging museum new impetus. Cost: 1.2 billion euros. To ensure that there are no further spectacular thefts, the Louvre now has a central security coordinator, called Monsieur Sûreté.

Where are the jewels?

And does the new director still have hope that the stolen crown jewels will turn up again? "I hope so," Leribault said on French radio station France Inter on the anniversary of the Louvre theft. "The stolen Renoir paintings from Cagnes-sur-Mer have just been found again. And the Louvre burglars were immediately caught by the police investigation."

But even a year after the break-in, there is no real trace of the crown jewels stolen from the Louvre with a material value of 88 million euros. Some of the jewels were last seen in an underground car park in the Paris banlieue. There are video recordings from the suburban town of Aubervilliers with some of the perpetrators about an hour after they entered the Louvre. Then the trail is lost.

Contradictory statements from the alleged perpetrators

All four perpetrators allegedly directly involved are already in custody. But their statements are contradictory. Michel Décurgis is a police reporter for the newspaper Le Parisien and had access to many of the interrogation protocols: "The jewels are either still in France, not far from the Paris suburb of Aubervilliers. But the most likely scenario is that the jewels left France for Belgium or the Maghreb and were resold there."

A trial date for the arrested suspected perpetrators of the Louvre theft is not yet known.