A gallery attendant on duty at the Louvre when thieves broke in and stole eight of France's crown jewels has said no-one could have been prepared for what unfolded as visitors began to arrive on Sunday morning.
All of a sudden we heard a huge noise, she told radio station France Inter, in the first account given by an attendant at the scene.
The unnamed attendant and two colleagues initially thought the noise to be an angry visitor, but it was not a normal sound: It was a dull, slightly metallic noise. It was, in fact, the moment thieves had used an angle grinder to burst through a reinforced window into the Gallery of Apollo, where the Louvre's collection of historic jewelry is kept.
Within eight minutes, the gang seized treasures, including a necklace that belonged to Napoleon's wife Empress Marie-Louise and a diadem of Napoleon III's wife Empress Eugenie, worth an estimated total of €88m (£77m).
The thieves used a mechanical ladder on the back of a lorry to lift them to a first-floor balcony to gain entry to the gallery. Two tourists ran towards them in panic, she said.
I saw one of the criminals turn around with something that looked to me like a chainsaw, then I yelled at my colleagues to get out, she recalled. She shouted a second time that it was a robbery and that they should run.
One of her colleagues raised the alarm over a walkie-talkie and then we finished evacuating the visits without quite realizing really what was going on. They shut all the doors as they left to protect the neighbouring galleries.
On reflection, the attendant said for us it was unbelievable the display cases could have been broken... never for a moment did we think there was such a risk... nobody can be prepared for that.
Another Louvre employee described the moments after the gang escaped. An anonymous security guard spoke of a very strong smell of petrol as he arrived at the scene outside the Louvre where the gang had parked their lorry.
He stated, I ran outside through the glass pyramid and across the courtyard... I got there at the very moment the criminals got away by scooter. The gang had ruptured the lorry's fuel tank and there was a blowtorch nearby, indicating their possible intention to set fire to their vehicle. It's clear they intended to set fire to their vehicle. I genuinely think we thwarted their plan because they would never have left behind so much evidence, he said.
The director of the museum, Laurence des Cars, mentioned that the empress's crown appeared to have been damaged when the gang prised it out of a narrow gap they had cut in one of the two display cases with an angle grinder. She addressed that although early assessments indicate that delicate restoration would be possible for the crown inlaid with diamonds and emeralds, there are profound concerns regarding the security measures currently in place at the Museum.
As details of the heist surface, both the staff and the management of the Louvre are urging for increased investment in security to prevent future incidents.
