Thieves have executed a brazen heist at the National Museum of Natural History in Paris, stealing six gold nuggets valued at an astonishing €600,000 (£520,000). This incident took place in the early hours of Tuesday and highlights an alarming trend of targeted robberies across cultural institutions in France.
Using heavy cutting equipment, the burglars gained access to the museum located in the botanical gardens on the Left Bank. They employed an angle grinder to break into the building and cut through the armoured glass surrounding the mineral displays with a blowtorch. Their meticulous planning allowed them to swiftly take the large nuggets dating back to the 18th and 19th centuries before escaping the scene.
The audacity of the theft was discovered when cleaners arrived for work before dawn. Founded in 1793 shortly after the French Revolution and linked to Sorbonne University, the museum is a prominent attraction for tourists. Despite heightened security measures recently introduced at various national cultural institutions, the museum’s alarm system had been compromised due to a recent cyber attack.
Emmanuel Skoulios, the museum director, remarked on the sophistication of the thieves. “We are dealing with an extremely professional team, perfectly aware of where they needed to go, and with professional equipment,” he stated in an interview with France 2 television. One of the stolen items of particular note was a native gold and quartz nugget, measuring 9cm by 8.5cm, which originated from the Donatia mine in California. The museum stressed that, beyond their monetary value, the nuggets carried immense heritage significance.
This incident underscores a growing threat posed by increasingly bold criminals targeting cultural sites. The museum expressed concern over the safety of public collections, pointing out that several other institutions have also fallen victim to robberies recently. Just earlier this month, a theft at the Adrien Dubouché National Museum in Limoges resulted in the loss of two national treasure dishes and a vase valued at approximately €9.5 million.
In November, a violent daytime raid at the Cognacq-Jay Museum featured robbers armed with axes and baseball bats, who shattered display cases in front of visitors and made off with at least five stolen items, including diamond-encrusted snuff boxes, valued at around €1 million. The perpetrators successfully escaped on motorcycles just three minutes after the heist began.
Other cities, including Marseille and Lyon, have also seen significant burglaries in recent years, fueling anxiety about the security of art and historical artifacts across France. The most notorious theft in recent history remains the May 2010 raid at the Paris Museum of Modern Art, where a notorious figure known as Vjeran Tomic, dubbed “Spider-Man” for his acrobatic skills, evaded security and stole artworks from masters like Matisse and Picasso, amounting to over €100 million in value. Tomic was sentenced to eight years in prison in 2017, yet none of the stolen artworks have been recovered.
As cultural institutions grapple with these increasing threats, the community remains on high alert for further incidents.
