Theft of historic jewellery

The Louvre Jewellery Heist: what we’re really losing when jewels are stolen

Published October 22, 2025

It’s like a plot straight out of Ocean’s Eleven: one of the most famous museums in the world, the Louvre in Paris, gets robbed in broad daylight of dazzling jewellery. For me, as an archaeologist and jewellery historian, 2025 is turning out to be quite a disconcerting year: this is not the first high-profile jewellery heist, and it’s not all tiaras and diamond parures — irreplaceable archaeological artefacts are still missing, too. So, let’s look beyond the daring movie plots to what is really lost — and that is much more than just jewels.

The Louvre Jewellery Heist: a cultural loss beyond value

On 19 October 2025, four thieves disguised as construction workers entered the Galerie d’Apollon at the Louvre through a maintenance lift and smashed their way into display cases.

In just under seven minutes, they stole eight pieces of historic jewellery, including items once belonging to Empress Eugénie, Queen Hortense, and Empress Marie-Louise.

Each of these pieces was a link to a moment in France’s royal past. The stolen items formed part of France’s national crown jewel collection. The museum emphasised that the real loss is not financial, but cultural and historical. Their theft severs those historical links I just mentioned. But the estimated financial value is still what you’ll find in most news items.

The Drents Museum robbery and the Dacian gold of Romania

Like I said, 2025 is a very disconcerting year. It began with another devastating loss: on January 25, the Drents Museum in Assen, the Netherlands, was robbed of the Dacian gold of Romania — unique archaeological jewellery loaned for a temporary exhibition.

When artefacts like these are stolen, the break is not only in possession, but in continuity. They carried evidence of how societies valued adornment, craftsmanship, and trade — insights now vanished along with the jewellery itself.

Its true worth lay in what it represented: a tangible connection to Romania’s ancient past and cultural identity. One of the stolen pieces, a stunning gold helmet, even features on the national banknotes – this is far more than treasure that has been taken.

Jewellery is a historical source, not just an ornament

You know my main conviction: jewellery is never just an object. It is a bearer of stories — about the person who wore it, the society that made it, the techniques used to craft it, and the routes through which it travelled. Jewellery is, in itself, a historical source.

And that is not just because of the links with historic events, such as France’s jewels. When jewellery is melted or broken apart, we lose for example the opportunity to gain technological insights.

Did you know that studying metalwork, alloys, settings, and components shares an incredible amount of insights? It tells us about trade contacts, developing techniques, social stratigraphy within a community, economic booms or crises… And there’s so much more, down to the ways a piece of jewellery was dangling, swaying, or pinned onto fabric. Can’t research that when the piece is gone.

Even if an item resurfaces, the web of relationships that made it historically meaningful is probably damaged, or worse, gone.

Melted history: how high gold prices threaten jewellery

These heists starkly illustrate another loss: the reduction of jewellery to its bullion value. I’ve argued before that jewellery is more than the worth of its components – see more about that here.

Thieves – and the networks they feed – increasingly treat centuries-old goldwork as raw material. This year’s record-high gold prices only add to that risk. In October 2025, gold briefly topped $4,000 per ounce. That’s a strong incentive to convert historically significant jewellery into meltable assets.

When thieves target archaeological artefacts, like the Dacian gold bracelets stolen in the Drents Museum heist, they are often stolen for their material worth, and the headlines in the news often seem to focus on that, too. It seems to be the first reaction – what was it worth?

And even then, these jewels are not stolen for resale on the art market. Because, think of it: who is going to buy that Dacian bracelet or that sapphire parure? These things are impossible to fence off.

So, what do we often see happening? Destruction. In search of financial value, stolen jewellery ends up melted down, broken apart, stones altered…and gone is your historic source.

The vanishing record: why so little historical jewellery survives

And that brings me to a lesser-discussed but super important aspect: there is not that much historical jewellery to begin with. Jewellery heritage survives selectively.

For example, those jewels stolen from the Louvre are among the few that remain of France’s turbulent royal past: the majority was already destroyed during past events.

And the further we travel back in time, the scarcer jewellery becomes: the Bronze Age artefacts stolen from St. Fagans in the UK, also in 2025, represent unique pieces of prehistoric Welsh gold jewellery – there aren’t that many others. With these pieces gone, we lose sight of a significant part of prehistory.

Heists and theft: what’s really at stake is losing history, not just objects

As a jewellery historian, my greatest concern is not just about spectacular thefts, but about the long-term loss of knowledge. We lose voices from history.

Obviously, a heist like in Paris, Assen or St Fagans shocks me: I simply cannot believe anyone would take cultural heritage from the public to serve their own benefit and profit. It’s maddening. It hurts. A jewellery theft of this magnitude sends shockwaves through a community as it is robbed of its tangible connection with history.

So, while news outlets highlight what was stolen, I’m trying to grasp the enormity of what has been lost – and can only hope the pieces will be recovered.

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