The Louvre robbery creates a “terrible image” of France, the justice minister said

Security measures “failed” to prevent a major jewel heist at the Louvre museum in Paris on Sunday, giving the country a very negative image, France’s justice minister said.

“People managed to park a furniture lift in the middle of Paris, raise it in a few minutes to grab priceless jewels and give France a terrible image,” said Gérald Darmanen.

Thieves with power tools broke into the world’s most visited museum in broad daylight, stealing eight items described as priceless before fleeing on scooters.

There are fears that unless the thieves are caught quickly, the priceless items – including a diamond and emerald necklace given by Emperor Napoleon to his wife – will be broken up and smuggled out of the country.

The museum announced it would remain closed Monday following the theft.

Darmanin told France Inter radio that he was sure the police would eventually arrest the thieves.

But the head of an organization specializing in finding and recovering stolen and looted art has warned that if the thieves are not caught in the next 24 to 48 hours, the stolen jewelery is likely to be “long gone”.

“It’s a race at the moment,” Chris Marinello, chief executive of Art Recovery International, told the BBC World Service’s Newshour programme.

Crowns and tiaras – which were stolen in the robbery – can easily be broken and sold in small pieces.

Thieves “won’t keep them intact, they will break them, melt down the precious metal, re-cut the precious stones and hide evidence of their crime,” Mr Marinello said, adding that it would be difficult to sell these jewels intact.

French police “know that in the next 24 or 48 hours, if these thieves are not caught, these pieces are probably long gone,” he said.

“They may catch the criminals, but they won’t return the jewels.

French Interior Minister Laurent Nunes said he was aware of a “major vulnerability” in museum security in France.

French media reported that a preliminary report by the Court of Auditors (due to be published in November) said that a third of the rooms in the wing where the robbery took place had no surveillance cameras.

President Emmanuel Macron described the robbery as “an attack on a heritage that we value because it is our history”.

And Nathalie Goulet, a member of the French Senate’s finance committee, told the BBC it was a “very painful” episode for France.

“We’re all disappointed and angry,” she said, and it’s “hard to understand how it happened so easily.”

Goulet said on the BBC Radio 4 program today that the gallery’s alarm had recently been damaged and “we have to wait for the investigation to find out if the alarm was disabled”.

She said the cut jewelery would be “used in a money laundering scheme”.

“I don’t think we’re dealing with amateurs. This is organized crime and they have absolutely no morals. They don’t appreciate the jewelry as part of history, just as a way to clean their dirty money,” she added.

The theft took place between 09:30 and 09:40 local time on Sunday morning, shortly after the museum opened its doors to visitors.

Four masked thieves used a truck equipped with a mechanical lift to gain access to the Galerie d’Apollon (Gallery of Apollo) through a balcony near the Seine River.

Photos from the scene show a vehicle-mounted ladder leading to a first-floor window.

Two of the thieves cut through the glass with a battery-powered disc cutter and entered the museum.

Then they threatened the security, who evacuated the building.

The thieves broke the glass cases and stole the jewelry, which in total contained thousands of diamonds and precious stones.

The robbery took only seven minutes.

When the museum’s alarms started sounding, staff followed protocol by contacting security forces, the culture ministry said in a statement.

The thieves tried to set fire to their vehicle from outside but were prevented by the intervention of a museum employee, it added.

A total of eight jewels were stolen, including an emerald and diamond necklace given by Napoleon to his wife, the Empress Marie Louise.

Also taken was a diadem (bejeweled headband) that once belonged to Empress Eugenie – wife of Napoleon III – which has nearly 2,000 diamonds.

They also took a necklace that once belonged to Marie-Amelie, the last queen of France, and which contained eight sapphires and 631 diamonds, according to the Louvre’s website.