In what’s starting to look like a wave rather than a coincidence, thieves have struck again in France—this time at the House of Enlightenment, Denis Diderot, in Landres. According to the South China Morning Post, nearly 2,000 gold and silver coins were taken during a nighttime break-in, just hours after the Louvre’s audacious daylight robbery that saw eight royal jewels vanish from the museum’s Galerie d’Apollon.
Authorities said the thieves at the Diderot museum “selected their loot with great expertise and precision.” The local prefecture confirmed the burglary occurred on Sunday night, noting that investigators are examining similarities to other museum robberies in recent months—including hits at the Jacques Chirac Museum in Sarran, the National Adrien Dubouché Museum in Limoges, and the Natural History Museum in Paris. Whether the crimes are connected remains unclear.
At the Louvre, four masked men used a truck-mounted electric ladder—known in Paris as a monte-meubles—to reach a second-floor window before smashing into display cases and escaping toward the Seine on scooters. The gang made off with eight pieces of Napoleon-era jewelry worth roughly $102 million, including a tiara, a necklace, and a reliquary brooch once belonging to the imperial family.
Experts told ARTnews that the Louvre robbers’ success may prove short-lived. “The real art in art theft is selling, not stealing,” said Robert Wittman, founder of the FBI’s Art Crime Team. “These guys left a lot of forensic evidence behind.”
James Ratcliffe, director of recoveries at the Art Loss Register, suggested the thieves were “opportunists rather than specialists,” taking advantage of outdated security systems. “It’s not necessarily difficult to get into historic institutions like the Louvre,” he said. “They were built for grandeur, not defense.”
The House of Enlightenment falls neatly into the same vulnerable category. According to the museum’s website it’s housed in a Du Breuil de Saint-Germain hôtel particulier, “a fine mansion dating back to the 16th and 18th centuries.” Hardly Fort Knox, though it’s unclear at this time what security measures the museum has in place.
French police are now investigating the Diderot theft alongside at least three other museum burglaries since September—all targeting small, high-value objects.
