The $100 million Louvre theft could make France’s stolen Crown Jewels as famous as the Mona Lisa

Visitors queue to enter the Louvre museum three days after historic jewels were stolen in a daring daylight heist, Wednesday, Oct. 22, 2025 in Paris. (AP Photo)

The robbery at the Louvre has done what no marketing campaign ever could: It has catapulted France’s dusty Crown Jewels — long admired at home, little known abroad — to global fame.

One week on, and the country is still wounded by the breach to its national heritage. Yet the crime is also a paradox. Some say it will make celebrities of the very jewels it sought to erase — much as the Mona Lisa’s turn-of-the-20th-century theft transformed the then little-known Renaissance portrait into the world’s most famous artwork.

In 1911, a museum handyman lifted the Leonardo da Vinci masterpiece off its hook. The loss went unnoticed for mor