The Louvre’s French Crown Jewel Heist

The Glass Pyramid Cracks

In 2025, thieves stole €88 million in Crown Jewels from the Louvre in under eight minutes, not by defeating the security system, but by exploiting the organization's culture. This white paper, "The Glass Pyramid Cracks," reveals that the true failure wasn't the breached window—which had been identified as a critical vulnerability in 2019—but the Enterprise Security Risk Management (ESRM) collapse that allowed that vulnerability to persist for six years. By characterizing assets as "priceless" while allocating a "restricted" security budget, leadership created a fatal misalignment where a €100 million collection was defended with resources appropriate for a gift shop.