Arya News - The crown belonging to Napoleon III’s wife can be restored despite being crushed in the Louvre heist, the museum has said.
The crown belonging to Napoleon III’s wife can be restored despite being crushed in the Louvre heist , the museum has said.
The Louvre released photographs of the 19th-century crown owned by Eugenie, the French empress, saying it could be restored to its original state “without the need for reconstruction”.
Raiders stole €88m (£76m) worth of jewels in October last year, but fumbled the diamond headpiece as they fled the scene.
The museum said that it had been “badly deformed” as the thieves tried to steal it through a narrow hole in a glass display case.
The Louvre says the ‘badly deformed’ crown can be restored to its original state
The crown is missing one of eight golden eagles but retains its 56 emeralds and all but 10 of its 1,354 diamonds.
Laurence des Cars, the museum’s president, has led an expert committee to supervise the crown’s restoration.
A band of masked thieves entered the museum’s Apollo Gallery shortly after 9.30am on Oct 19, once it had opened to the public, and stole eight royal objects, including a necklace, brooch and tiara.
One of eight golden eagles on the crown is missing, but it retains its 56 emeralds and all but 10 of its 1,354 diamonds
The gang gained access to the gallery from a truck with an extendable ladder, before using cutting equipment to get in through a window and open the display cases.
Two of the thieves entered the museum by cutting through the window with power tools. They then threatened the guards before cutting through the glass of two display cases housing French crown jewels.
Empress Eugenie’s crown pictured as it was prior to the heist
The thieves were inside the museum for under four minutes before making their escape on two scooters, prosecutors said.
Four male suspects have been arrested on suspicion of carrying out the raid. But prosecutors believe they are yet to catch the mastermind behind the raid.
As well as the crown, the thieves stole a diamond-studded tiara, necklaces, earrings and brooches that belonged to Empress Eugenie. These items remain missing.
It was the first theft from the Louvre since 1998, when a painting by Camille Corot was stolen and never seen again.
The museum’s director blamed the Louvre’s ageing security camera system for the failure to detect the thieves as they carried out the heist in October last year.
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Inside the world"s clumsiest heist
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In the wake of the raid, security was increased across France’s museums.
In September, criminals broke into Paris’s natural history museum, stealing gold samples worth €600,000 (£510,000).
The same month, thieves stole two dishes and a vase from a museum in Limoges, in central France, the losses estimated at €6.5m.
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