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A brazen 7-minute theft at the Louvre has thrown the spotlight back on history’s most audacious museum raids. The world’s most visited museum, which welcomed 8.7 million people in 2024 and houses global icons such as the Mona Lisa, was hit on a Sunday morning as thieves sped off on motorbikes.
France’s Culture Ministry said “eight jewels of immeasurable value” were stolen, while French daily Le Monde splashed the story as the “heist of the century.” The headline coverage quickly pushed readers to recall the long, troubling history of museum break-ins around the world.
August 2023, London — The British Museum revealed that around 2,000 items, including gold jewelry and gemstones, were stolen over a long period. The institution described it as an “inside job,” meaning the theft was allegedly carried out by someone with access to the museum.
August 2020, near Utrecht — During COVID-19 closures, thieves slipped in through a back door at the Hofje van Mevrouw Van Aerden Museum and took Frans Hals’s Two Laughing Boys. The 1626 work was valued by one expert at €15 million (over $17.5 million) and had already been stolen twice before.
March 2020, Amsterdam — Van Gogh’s "Parsonage Garden at Nuenen in Spring," on loan to the Singer Laren Museum, was taken in a midnight break-in while museums were shut during the pandemic.
November 2019, Dresden — Thieves entered the Gruenes Gewoelbe (Green Vault) Museum and made off with jewelry containing more than 4,300 diamonds with a total value exceeding $113 million (over $131 million). Much of the haul was later recovered.
February 2008, Zurich — Armed robbers stormed the Buehrle Museum and stole four works by Cezanne, Degas, Van Gogh, and Monet, valued at $164 million. The Monet and Van Gogh pieces were found soon after in a parking lot; the Cezanne resurfaced in 2012 in Serbia.
May 2015, Madrid — Five Francis Bacon paintings worth a combined $25 million were stolen from a private home; three were recovered two years later.
October 2012, Rotterdam — Seven works by artists including Picasso, Matisse, and Monet vanished from the Kunsthal Museum. A Picasso briefly thought to be found turned out to be a fake. A Romanian suspect and accomplices were convicted in 2013.
May 2010, Paris — Five paintings worth €120 million were stolen from the Musee d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, including Picasso’s Dove with Green Peas and Henri Matisse’s Pastorale.
December 2004, Sao Paulo — Thieves stole Picasso’s 1904 Portrait of Suzanne Bloch (about $50 million) and Brazilian painter Candido Portinari’s 1939 The Coffee Worker (about $5.5 million). Both were recovered a month later.
August 2004, Oslo — Armed robbers seized Edvard Munch’s The Scream and Madonna. The 1893 masterpieces were found in August 2006. It was the second theft of The Scream within a decade.
December 2002, Amsterdam — Two Van Gogh paintings, each valued at roughly $56 million, were taken in a daring theft from the Van Gogh Museum. Both were found in 2016 at a rural property linked to a drug trafficker near Naples.
December 2001, Stockholm — Renoir’s Conversation and Young Parisian, plus a Rembrandt self-portrait, were stolen from the National Museum. Conversation turned up in April 2002; the Rembrandt in 2005.
November 1993, Stockholm — Eight works by Picasso and Georges Braque, together worth about $60 million, were taken from the Museum of Modern Art. Some pieces were recovered in the following months.
April 1991, Amsterdam — In what was then called the world’s biggest art heist, 20 paintings worth about $500 million were stolen from the Van Gogh Museum, including The Potato Eaters. The paintings were soon found in an abandoned car nearby.
November 1990, Boston — Thirteen works disappeared from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum after two men dressed as police officers were let in by security responding to a supposed disturbance. The thieves tied up the guards and roamed the galleries for an hour.
December 1985, Mexico City — Two veterinary students slipped into the National Museum of Anthropology and carried off 124 priceless pre-Columbian objects in an overnight raid.
August 1911, Paris — The Louvre’s Mona Lisa vanished in what is still the most famous art theft of all time. Ironically, the painting was not as celebrated then as it is today.
Although it was given an estimated value of around $5 million at the time—a symbolic figure—the real impact came after recovery in Florence two years later, when the masterpiece returned to Paris as a cultural icon that still draws long queues to its glass case.
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