The Louvre reopened its now-infamous Apollo Gallery on July 22, nine months after a group of thieves lifted $102 million worth of Napoleon era jewels from the Paris museum. The brazen daytime heist took less than eight minutes, during which time thieves, disguised as construction workers, used a monte-meubles, or a moving exterior staircase, to break into the Apollo Gallery. Once inside, they quickly absconded with nine bejeweled objects, including a tiara, a necklace, earrings, and a brooch. Only Empress Eugénie’s diamond-and-emerald-encrusted crown, which the thieves dropped while escaping on scooters, has been recovered.
The lavishly decorated Apollo Gallery, however, will no longer house what remains of the Louvre’s collection of crown jewels. Instead, Louvre director Christophe Leribault told Reuters, the remaining jewels will be on view in a more secure location elsewhere in the vast museum.
While the gilded gallery is currently devoid of the glass display cases that once held bejeweled objects and hardstone vessels, there is still plenty to admire in the second-floor space. The vaulted, carved ceiling is covered in paintings of Apollo driving his chariot across the sky, a project overseen in the 1660s by Charles Le Brun, court painter to Louis XIV (known as the Sun King). Two centuries later, Eugène Delacroix was commissioned to create the ceiling’s central showpiece, the 40-foot-wide painting Apollo Slaying the Serpent Python. On the gallery’s walls, meanwhile, hang 28 portrait tapestries of monarchs, architects, and artists.
The Louvre’s website still notes that the The Galerie d’Apollon is temporarily closed. A note on the very bottom of the page says that “In the summer of 2026, it was restored to its function as a ceremonial gallery, itself designed as an artwork in the 17th century.”
