Copyright The New York Times
In plain sight It took just eight minutes. Thieves broke into the Louvre in broad daylight on Sunday and made off with jewelry said to be of “incalculable” worth, all while visitors and staff members were going about their business in one of the world’s most famous museums. “The French people,” the country’s justice minister said, “feel as though they have been robbed.” My colleagues have been reporting on the heist — how the thieves pulled it off, why they did it and what precedents there are for this kind of high-stakes burglary. How they did it: With a removal truck, a ladder and a disc cutter. At 9:30 a.m. on Sunday, four men parked a truck behind the Louvre underneath the first-floor balcony windows of the Apollo Gallery. At 9:34 a.m., they climbed up an electric ladder from the back of the truck. (This truck-mounted ladder — a monte-meubles — is a pretty common sight on the streets of Paris, where it’s used to lift bulky furniture through apartment windows.)
