Gold specimens worth $700,000 have been stolen from Paris’s Natural History Museum, in a heist linked to a recent wave of robberies at French cultural institutions.
Thieves have broken into Paris’s National Natural History Museum, stealing gold samples valued at about $700,000 in the latest of several robberies targeting French cultural institutions.
The break-in, discovered Tuesday morning, saw intruders use an angle grinder and blow torch to breach the riverside complex in the city’s 5th district, famed for its dinosaur skeletons and mineral collections.
The museum confirmed the theft of several native gold specimens, describing them as carrying “immeasurable heritage value” despite their market price of around €600,000.
Police sources told Le Parisien that the museum’s alarm and surveillance systems had been disabled by a cyberattack in July, which the thieves appeared to exploit.
The incident follows a series of cultural heists across France. Earlier this month, the Adrien Dubouche Museum in Limoges lost Chinese porcelain treasures worth €6.5 million, while armed robbers struck the Cognacq-Jay Museum in Paris last November.
Authorities have opened an investigation into the latest theft.