All the Other times the Louvre was Robbed
I'm detecting a pattern...
Good morning CrimeReads! As you know, there was a REAL LIFE jewel robbery at the Louvre on Sunday. I know, it’s insane. It’s the stuff of crime fiction… the stuff of heist movies… the stuff of this website! But in REAL LIFE!
Just in case you can’t get enough of that story, I thought I’d remind you of the OTHER times the Louvre was burglarized.
There was that time in 1911 when an Italian stole the Mona Lisa, with intent to return it to Italy. Two years later, he was caught after bringing the painting to a dealer in Florence.
Then there was the time in 1976, when three burglars stole the diamond-encased sword that was used in King Charles X’s 1824 coronation.
And THEN there was the time, in 1983, when thieves stole two pieces of 16th-century Italian armor. That case was only recently solved.
And now this! Now this outlandish, utterly wild robbery of priceless Napoleonic jewels. It’s almost too much to handle.
Olivia Rutigliano
Olivia Rutigliano is an Editor at Lit Hub and CrimeReads. Her other work appears in Vanity Fair, Vulture, Lapham's Quarterly, AirMail, the Los Angeles Review of Books, Public Books, The Baffler, Bright Wall/Dark Room, Politics/Letters, The Toast, Truly Adventurous, and elsewhere. She has a PhD from the departments of English/comparative literature and theatre at Columbia University, where she was the Marion E. Ponsford fellow. She hosts the podcasst "Culture Schlock" at Lit Hub Radio. She is on instagram at @oldebean, twitter at @oldrutigliano, and bluesky at @oliviarutigliano.bsky.social.
