The Louvre heist took seven minutes

Question

On Sunday, October 19, four thieves broke into the Louvre in broad daylight and stole $102 million worth in jewels. Here's the kicker, it took only seven minutes to complete. Researchers are trying to figure out how such a guarded and secure museum was broken into in such a small span of time in the middle of the day. https://abcnews.go.com/International/thieves-robbed-louvre-minutes-minute-minute-breakdown-daring/story?id=126719610

Answer 1

According to the Time article by Rebecca Schneid and Solcyré Burga, investigators say the thieves entered and exited the museum in under four minutes on Sunday morning. Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez said the robbery was "a major, highly organized operation carried out by a team that had done scouting".  In the museum, the thieves smashed glass cases and stole eight pieces of historic royal jewelry valued at around $100 million. Robbers escaped on scooters and were gone in less than four minutes, so no, the robbery didn't take seven minutes; the heist lasted just under four minutes from start to finish. 

https://time.com/7326868/louvre-robbery-museum-crown-jewels/

Comments

I really like how you provided clarification on how the thieves broke in, it really shows the depths you went to answer this question. I also really like how you included a link to where all this information is provided. Nice job.

Answer 2

The claim is largely true, based on current information. ABC, CNN, and BBC report that according to police, the vehicle with the ladder that the thieves used arrived to the Louvre at 9:30 am, and by 9:37 to 9:38, they had left. So depending on the source, the thieves were on site for 7 to 8 minutes. According to CNN and BBC, French police believe the thieves were only inside for 4 minutes, and so one could argue the heist took only 4 minutes, but this boils down to differing definitions. However, as the robbery happened recently and the investigation is still on-going, more information may come up to confirm or disprove this claim.

https://abcnews.go.com/International/louvre-museum-closes-after-robbery-french-minister/story?id=126657104

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cg7nrlkg0zxo

https://www.cnn.com/2025/10/23/europe/france-louvre-director-heist-intl-hnk

Answer 3

Based on current information, this claim is untrue. According to a TIME article, investigators suspect that it took less than four minutes for the thieves to enter the museum, steal the jewels, and exit the museum to escape. Employees at the museum have been reporting understaffing since earlier this year. They have claimed that there were "too few eyes on too many rooms" (TIME). This is still a developing case, and there are a lot of unanswered questions, but we can establish that it took less than four minutes for the thieves to enter and exit the museum. ABC News published an article with an estimated timeline of seven minutes for the entire robbery, which included the time it took for the thieves to park their truck and then drive away. However, they also concluded that the thieves would have only spent four minutes in the museum. So overall, this claim is untrue. 

Answer 4

This claim is false, according to a BBC article, “French police say the thieves were inside for four minutes and made their escape on two scooters waiting outside at 09:38.” The robbers reportedly arrived at 9:30, making their total time 8 minutes, and time inside the Louvre 4 minutes. In the museum, the thieves smashed glass cases and stole eight pieces of historic royal jewelry valued at around $100 million. So, if you are only talking about the heist inside the Louvre, it only took 4 minutes, but the heist as a whole took 8 minutes.

BBC article

Answer 5

This claim is technically false. Although many initial reports about the Louvre heist allege that it took 7-8 minutes, according to the most recent reporting, it is believed to have taken only 4.  

Multiple highly trusted and reputable news sources such as ABC News and the New York Times have reported that the Louvre heist took just under 8 minutes.  

https://abcnews.go.com/International/thieves-robbed-louvre-minutes-minute-minute-breakdown-daring/story?id=126719610 

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/19/world/europe/louvre-paris-robbery.html 

Therefore, upon first glance, one would assume that was the correct duration of the heist. However, all of those articles are from 3-4 days ago. That may seem recent in the grand scheme of things, but given how fast things can change during an ongoing investigation of this profile, this is old, outdated, and inaccurate news. 

Yesterday Time Magazine published the latest update on the case, now claiming that the heist took only 4 minutes. The piece titled Louvre Heist: How Thieves Carried Out an Audacious Heist of Napoleonic Jewels reads: "Investigators say the thieves entered and exited the museum in under four minutes on Sunday morning, escaping with eight pieces from France’s Crown Jewels."  A 3-minute difference may seem minute, but the heist taking just 4 minutes is even more mind-boggling and impressive, not to mention that that small detail could be crucial to investigators. 

https://time.com/7326868/louvre-robbery-museum-crown-jewels/  

Overall this claim is untrue, but not in a malicious or misinformative way; the original reporting is just outdated. Perhaps in 3 days we'll find out it really took 2 minutes and what we trust now may also be false. 

Answer 6

This claim seems to be true as if we define the heist length as long it took to get in, grab the jewels, and then leave on their two scooters then it did take about 7 minutes. On AP news, a source that is generally held to be reliable, they list a timeline of the heist showing that it took about 8 minutes for everything to happen. The New York Times, also a mostly reliable news source, has an article where they also say that the heist lasted for about 8 minutes. Which I consider 8 minutes to be close enough to seven to count for this claim to be mostly true, as it can be hard to get an exact time of when everything happened. It can also be hard to quantify a fully 'correct' timeline as it can depend on when you, yourself think the heist truly started and truly ended. 

https://apnews.com/article/louvre-heist-jewels-paris-timeline-a072c2a5aba6ab5eeb429a280266a799

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/21/world/louvre-jewelry-heist.html

Answer 7

This claim is true. It only took the robbers seven minutes in broad daylight to steal some of the most precious jewels in the world. I think it’s amazing that they broke in and escaped using a motorized truck life, and then fled on electric scooters. There are many different news articles on this heist, as it is insane that it happened in this day and age, but the few I was interested in involved the company that made the motorized lift. The company, Böcker, posted an ad on Instagram with a picture of the heist and captioned it saying the next time you need things to be moved quickly, use our company. I found this Instagram post on CNN. The other news article I found was published by ABC News. This news article discussed the meaning behind the instagram post further. One of the companies spokesperson mentioned that they had other ideas for the caption of their post, but ultimately decided to not take it to far because it is a very serious crime after all.

Sources:

CNN News

ABC News

Answer 8

The claim "The Louvre Heist Took 7 Minutes" is true. 

The claim originally comes from an ABCNews article by Mason Leath titled, "How thieves robbed the Louvre in just 7 minutes: A minute-by-minute breakdown of the daring heist". The article provides a rundown of the heist, based on details from investigators. The break-in and theft occurred at 9:30 a.m. on Sunday, October 19, 2025, just 30 minutes after The Louvre opened for the day. The thieves were said to have arrived at the Louvre, using a truck with an extendable ladder to reach a second-floor balcony to enter the museum. 9:34 a.m is when two of the thieves, disguised as construction workers, "scaled the ladder and used an angle grinder to cut through a window in the Apollo Gallery, just a few rooms away from where the "Mona Lisa" is displayed. The thieves then smashed two display cases using the angle grinder and removed eight pieces of jewerly, belonging to Emperor Napoleon and his wife, according to police." The museum alarm was then triggered at 9:37 a.m., alerting museum staff and authorities about the theft. At 9:38 a.m., the thieves escaped by descending the ladder and driving off on two motorbikes heading southeast toward the A6 highway and the city of Lyon. (M. Leath, "How thieves robbed the Louvre in just 7 minutes: A minute-by-minute breakdown of the daring heist" ABC News, October 22, 2025). 

However, in order to fully fact-check this claim, I checked out other sources who reported on the same thing. CNN also reported the timeline of the heist, describing its unfolding at 9:30 a.m. when the robbers parked a truck with a mobile ladder outside the gallery, and its end at 9:38 a.m., with the thieves successfully escaping the building. CNN also mentioned that the police were called at 9:36 a.m., 6 minutes after the thieves entered the Louvre. ("No Security Cameras covered Louvre balcony where thieves entered, director says" CNN, October 23, 2025)

This claim can however appear confusing and inaccurate, as a USA Today article, J. Loehrke, "How thieves stole treasures worth millions from the Louvre Museum in just seven minutes," USA Today, October 20, 2025, reports that the thieves were inside the museum for four minutes, according to French police. Nevertheless, this does not mean that the heist did not take seven minutes, as the article still reports the heist to be seven minutes. Just because the thieves were inside the building for four minutes does not indicate the heist only took seven; the thieves used the remaining minutes to escape, meaning in total, it took seven minutes to complete the heist.

Answer 9

After consulting numerous sources, we cannot confidently claim that the Louvre heist took seven minutes. On one side of this claim, we have multiple established news sources reporting that the infamous heist that took place last Sunday lasted exactly seven minutes. For example, ABC News declared in an article published the following morning, on October 20th, that the suspects “left through the same window [they entered] about seven minutes later”. Similarly, NBC News also published an article the next morning in which they claim the heist took place “in the space of just seven minutes in the casual daylight of Sunday morning”. While these are just two of the articles that come up when doing a quick Google search on how long the Louvre heist lasted, many other similar articles were published by news companies such as CNN, Yahoo! News, and Time Magazine. While these news sources are prevalent within the media landscape currently, it is extremely important to question the facts being published. While each of these sources claims that investigators say the heist took seven minutes, I have found additional articles of the same level of credibility that claim investigators are saying something different. For example, in an article published by the New York Times, it is claimed that the heist took 8 minutes in total. While the New York Times makes this claim, BBC News claims that the French Police “say the thieves were inside for four minutes”. With so many interfering statements from news sources of the same level of credibility, we cannot confidently claim that the Lourve Heist took exactly 7 minutes. We must wait for a formal breakdown of events from French investigators before we can make a claim on exactly how long the heist took. I tried looking for a formal briefing while fact checking this statement but was unable to find one. As a result, we cannot confidently claim that the Louvre heist took seven minutes.