Criminals Target French Museums

Just hours after priceless French crown jewels were stolen from the Louvre in Paris in broad daylight, around 2,000 gold and silver coins worth approximately €90,000 (U.S. $104,000) were taken from a museum in Landres in northeastern France. The theft occurred Sunday night at the Maison des Lumières, a museum dedicated to philosopher Denis Diderot. When staff opened the museum on Tuesday, they discovered a display case had been smashed and immediately alerted authorities. According to local officials, the coins were chosen with “great expertise.”

The stolen collection, dating from 1790 to 1840, was part of a city archive uncovered in 2011 during renovation work at the site. This theft marks the latest in a series of heists targeting French cultural institutions. Last month, six gold nuggets worth €1.5 million were stolen from Paris’s Natural History Museum. A Chinese national was later arrested in Barcelona after attempting to sell melted-down gold linked to the crime. Art detective Arthur Brand warned that these high-profile crimes could inspire criminals to carry out additional thefts across Europe, highlighting security weaknesses in cultural institutions.