The new brushed-steel cabinets housed the royal collection of gems and the Crown Diamonds, or what remains of them, which were previously exhibited in two separate places in the Decorative Arts Department.  Placed in single file along the center of the room, one after the other, the aim was to provide visitors with a comprehensive and historical overview of the museum's unique jewellery creations and their symbolic importance in terms of France's monarchical identity, from the Ancien Régime to the Second Empire. 

The first display case housed jewellery dating from before the Revolution. The second displayed jewellery from the First Empire, the Restoration, and the July Monarchy, while the third display case housed jewellery from the Second Empire, including remnants of Empress Eugénie's grand finery. 

Once inside the museum, two accomplices are said to have used an angle grinder to break open two of the new vitrines which housed the jewels of the Second Empire (1852–1870) and the sovereigns' jewels (1800–1852). 

In just seven minutes, the perpetrators were in and out of the Louvre, carrying away  eight priceless pieces from the French collection, before making a hasty getaway on two Yamaha TMax scooters they also drove to the scene.  Filmed by CCTV cameras, the jewel thieves appear to have left the museum heading in the direction of the A6 motorway and are said to have dropped one of the nine pieces they initially grabbed. 

Initial reports, including one by a witness passing by on a bike, indicate that there were four perpetrators in total: two who dressed as workmen, each wearing a yellow or orange safety vest who ascended the cherry-picker and broke into the museum's gallery.   Two other accomplices  waited below the museum's windows before all for left the museum on the waiting scooters at 9:38, headed in the direction of the Hôtel de Ville. 

Shortly after the incident CL Press posted a video of a motorcycle helmet which was one of several objects found with or underneath the abandoned cherry picker truck.  Taken into evidence, these items may allow for the identification of one or more of the robbers through DNA traces.

According to the press release issued by the  French Ministry of Culture, the eight stolen jewellery items are:

This tiara from the set of Queen Marie-Amélie and Queen Hortense;

This necklace from the sapphire set of Queen Marie-Amélie and Queen Hortense;

An earring, one of a pair from the sapphire parure of Queen Marie-Amélie and Queen Hortense;

This emerald necklace from the set of Marie-Louise;

This pair of emerald earrings from Marie-Louise's set.

This Reliquary brooch;

This tiara of Empress Eugenie;

And this large bodice bow of Empress Eugenie (brooch).

A ninth item, the Crown of Empress Eugénie de Montijo, set with numerous emeralds and diamonds and created by Alexandre-Gabriel Lemonnier for the Paris Universal Exposition of 1855, was dropped by the criminals during their escape and its condition is "under examination".

Immediately after the incident, the Louvre was shuttered for the day as the Paris prosecutor's office opened a judicial investigation in partnership with the Criminal Investigation Department's Anti-Banditism Brigade (BRB) with the support of the Central Office for Combating Trafficking in Cultural Property (OCBC).   

Frances crown jewels have always had a tough go of it.  

Between September 11 and 16 in 1792, amid the chaotic events of the French Revolution, and days before the storming of the Bastille, a group of thieves staged a burglary over multiple nights, breaking into the poorly guarded Garde-Meuble de la Couronne (Crown Furniture Storehouse), a grand building on Place de la Concorde (then called Place Louis XV then Place de la Révolution) in Paris.  Over a series of days these accomplices helped themselves to diamonds, pearls, sapphires, emeralds, and rubies, many considered priceless due to their association with the French monarchy. Three of the most important pieces taken (some later recovered) were the Sancy Diamond, the Regent Diamond, and the Blue Diamond of the Crown (a large blue diamond some believe was later recut to become the Hope Diamond which is now housed at the Smithsonian, however, that theory remains unconfirmed). It was a revolutionary cultural property loss to which France never fully recovered.

Luckily, the Regent was found the following year, in 1792 which allowed Napoleon to display it on his coronation sword on December 2, 1804. 

After the revolutionary debacle, successive monarchies endeavoured to bring parts of the treasure back, but with only limited success.

Fast forward almost two centuries later and the Louvre’s standout jewel theft was an armed night-time raid, which, like today's daylight theft, impacted the Galerie d’Apollon.  On 16 December 1976, three masked burglars climbed a metal scaffolding set up by workers cleaning the facade of the former palace at dawn and assaulted two guards.  After entering the gallery they broke into a glass display case and made off with the diamond-studded ceremonial sword made in 1824 by Frederic Bapst for the coronation of King Charles X, leaving behind his stirrups and saddle.  

That piece has never been recovered. 

It is surreal to think that these stolen objects, symbols of empire, artistry, and craftsmanship, might now be lost forever.  Beyond their material worth, these jewels are part of Europe's collective heritage: tangible links to empires powerfully built and faded, a testament to French culture, and to her power.

The loss is not only France’s, but the world’s.

By:  Lynda Albertson

The cosily niche books and manuscripts market may be about to be hit by one its biggest scandals in recent years. And Paris's Musée des Lettres et Manuscrits, as well as its sister organization the Institut des Lettres et Manuscrits, is in the eye of the storm. 

Le Point reported that on November 18, France's anti-fraud brigade raided the museum and the various branches of Aristophil, a company owned by the museum's founder, Gérard Lhéritier. 

The company is suspected by the tax authorities and Tracfin—a public body fighting money laundering and terrorism financing—of “deceptive marketing practices," and “gang fraud." At time of writing, the Aristophil website as well as the websites for the museum and the institute appear to have been taken offline.

Successions of black windows, balconies, shadows, satellite dishes: Evol (b. 1970, lives and works in Berlin) highjacks urban space with his stencils of miniature housing projects, placing the peripheral, the invisible, at the heart of cities and institutions. His installation work was awarded the Prix Arte/ Slick in 2010. His scattering of buildings in ruins is a pointed comment on the failure of an architectural and political utopia. Arrested by the police’s anti-graffiti task force in 2012, Cokney (b. 1985, lives and works in Paris) was tried and was fined over 200,000 euro for his illegal paintings on trains and subway cars, a decision which he contested. This incident, and the publicity it received, compelled the artist to eschew the secrecy and clandestinity typically associated with graffiti art, paradoxically allowing him to own up to—and even lay claim—to his work. A celebrated tattoo artist, Cokney worked at Seen (NYC) before setting up at Hand In Glove (Paris). In his installation at the Palais de Tokyo, Cokney combines paintings with the estimates, complaints and reports generated during his trial, thus emphasizing that the police archives and the judicial examination of his work constitute an integral part of his production. More Information: http://artdaily.com/news/70804/Palais-de-Tokyo-in-Paris-brings-together-the-works-of-various-graffiti-and-street-artists#.U58cPJSwKwI[/url] Copyright © artdaily.org

Musée de Montmartre: 12, rue Cortot

Vintage cars attract crowd on Sunday in pedestrian area

Rear of the building under renovation, 10 Cortot

The caretaker's apartment at 10 rue Cortot was inhabited from 1866 to 1873 by Julien Tanguy, an art supplier. Pissaro, Monet, Renoir, Cézanne, Toulouse-Lautrec, and Van Gogh came to get their supplies at his shop in rue Clauzel. When they couldn't pay Tanguy they gave him pieces of their work.

Death in a Fur Coat, 1897

Vineyard overlooking cabaret, Au Lapin Agile (red building)

The Paris fire brigade, which has not yet given a cause for the start of the fire, said work was taking place to establish the extent of fire, smoke and water damage to historic interiors and decorative artwork on walls and ceilings. 

Before the fire, many works inside the building remained in an almost pristine state, including a series of frescos in the gallery of Hercules by Charles Le Brun, the 17th-century French artist who also worked for Louis XIV.

I know that my family were Jewish, of course, and I know they were staggeringly rich, but I really don’t want to get into the sepia saga business, writing up some elegiac Mitteleuropa narrative of loss…. And I’m not entitled to nostalgia about all that lost wealth and glamour from a century ago.

I want to know what the relationship has been between this wooden object that I am rolling between my fingers – hard and tricky and Japanese – and where it has been. I want to be able to reach to the handle of the door and turn it and feel it open. I want to walk into each room where this object has lived, to feel the volume of the space, to know what pictures were on the walls, how the light fell from the windows. And I want to know whose hands it has been in, and what they felt about it and thought about it – if they thought about it. I want to know what it has witnessed.

Unfortunately the merest scratch of Japanese character is the only clue to the artist’s name, so I am unable to say who conceived, and in creamy ivory executed, the hold man horribly embarrassed by a cuttle-fish; the priest who made the soldier pick up a deer for him and laughed to think that the brisket would be his and the burden his companions…

Rear entrance to musée d'art modern de la ville de Paris

By Catherine Sezgin ARCA MA '09


Correction: The original version assumed that the window's metal accordion shutters were exterior; a visit to the museum in July 2010 showed that the metal shutters were on the inside of the windows. 

According to officials, the thief cut through a gate padlock and broke a window to gain access to the museum, all without alerting the security guards or triggering the museum's alarm system. A security camera filmed the intruder making off with five paintings, but the works were only discovered missing during morning rounds just before 7 a.m. on May 20.