The Museum of Natural History in Paris announced that a theft was discovered on the morning of September 16 after a break-in raised concerns about the security of cultural institutions. A cleaner alerted staff after noticing that several gold nuggets were missing from the national collections. The museum, located in the fifth arrondissement, is known for its dinosaur skeletons and taxidermy specimens, reported Süddeutsche Zeitung.
Thieves broke into the museum and stole natural gold specimens worth about 600,000 euros (710,000 dollars) in raw value, which the institution described as having priceless heritage value. “We regret this immeasurable loss for research and cultural heritage and its dissemination to the public,” the museum stated in a press release. “For security and investigation reasons, the geology and mineralogy gallery remains closed to the public until further notice and is subject to reinforced surveillance measures,” the museum stated.
Preliminary information indicated that about six kilograms of native gold were taken, including a five-kilogram nugget roughly the size of a football and three other pieces of about one kilogram each. Museum teams reviewed the collection to check for other losses, Infobae reported.
The Paris Prosecutor’s Office said the burglars used angle grinders and a blowtorch to breach the riverside complex and left their tools behind as they fled. Initial findings showed they burned through armored glass protecting the display and sawed through an emergency exit door. The break-in occurred during the night of September 15th-16th and was discovered on Tuesday morning; the police were immediately alerted.
The prosecutor’s office opened an investigation for organized gang theft, handled by the Brigade de répression du banditisme, an antigang unit, for aggravated theft of cultural property exhibited in a museum of France. Police suspect the thieves were well-informed about the museum’s security, and no arrests have been announced. It remains unclear whether security measures were functioning at the time.
A cyberattack in July disrupted the museum’s alarm and video surveillance systems and led to the suspension of an exhibition and the temporary unavailability of digital tools linked to research, libraries, and collection databases. The malfunctioning systems were key factors that allowed the thieves to carry out the theft, according to Le Parisien. A police source suggested the perpetrators may have been aware of this situation. “The theft comes at a critical time for cultural institutions and museums in particular,” the museum stated.
The museum holds about 68 million objects in its natural history collections, including rocks, minerals, animals, plants, fossils, and prehistoric, anthropological, and ethnological pieces. Enhanced surveillance measures were put in place, and additional staff were deployed across the 30-plus-hectare site with dozens of buildings.
One of the museum’s noted pieces is a natural gold-and-quartz specimen measuring 9 cm by 8.5 cm from the Donataria mine in California, donated by a wealthy French antique collector.
The theft followed a series of robberies that targeted cultural institutions in France. In November 2024, four hooded criminals used axes and baseball bats to smash display cases at the Cognacq-Jay Museum in Paris and stole several 18th-century works, including seven snuff boxes of high historical and heritage value, Paris Musées said. The next day, an armed robbery at a museum in Saône-et-Loire resulted in the theft of jewelry valued at several million euros, reported by Stern, Infobae, Portfolio, Akhbarak, Vietnam Plus, and Bild. In September 2023, thieves stole three national treasures, including two dishes and a vase made of Chinese porcelain, from the Adrien Dubouché National Museum in Limoges, with losses estimated at 6.5 million euros.
In May 2010, Croatian burglar Vjeran Tomic, known as Spider-Man, stole masterpieces by Picasso, Matisse, Braque, Léger, and Modigliani from the Museum of Modern Art in Paris, valued at over 100 million euros. The case revealed security failures, including motion detectors that had not been working for two months; three guards failed to detect the theft, and Tomic was sentenced in 2017 to eight years in prison.
Written with the help of a news-analysis system.