Paris — When thieves broke into the Louvre’s Apollo Gallery and chopped up the display cases with an angle grinder, they made off with a collection of Napoleonic jewellery.
But during their daring escape through the window, Empress Eugenie’s crown slipped from their grasp and was left crushed on the pavement below.
This week, more than 100 days after the Crown’s dramatic collapse, the Louvre Museum released images showing its current state, ahead of repair work that it hopes can restore it to its former glory.
Commissioned by Napoleon III, the royal headdress was created for Empress Eugenie de Montijo and presented at the 1855 Paris Universal Exposition.
The piece belongs to a rare group of French Crown Jewels still in the nation’s possession, most of them having been looted during the French Revolution that began in 1789. The majority of what remained was auctioned off by the French state in a wave of republican sentiment almost a hundred years later.
Although it was never used at coronations, it became a symbol of imperial power before entering the Louvre collection in 1988.
For decades, the crown has dazzled millions of visitors with 1,354 diamonds and 56 emeralds, decorated with eight palmettes that alternate with stately golden eagles.
Today, one eagle is missing, and half of the palmettes have been separated, with some deformities.
The diamond-and-emerald orb, once a symbol of imperial power, now sinks into the crown’s curly frame, though it remains intact.
Experts believe the crown’s flexible structure became strained when thieves pried it from its display through a narrow slot cut by an angle grinder, according to a report from the Louvre Museum.
“This pressure caused the crown rings to separate, one of which was actually lost in the exhibition,” the museum said in the report.
She added that the subsequent impact when it hit the ground likely crushed the delicate artifact.
Although its appearance has changed, almost every element of the crown survives, allowing for a “full restoration” without reconstruction or recreation, the museum added. “It would simply involve reshaping its frame.”
She has kept all 56 of her emeralds, and of the 1,354 diamonds, only about ten small ones remain from the circumference of the base. Nine others were dismissed but maintained.
The Louvre Museum announced that it will soon invite restorers to submit proposals to repair the crown, in a competitive tender process overseen by a newly formed expert committee.
Since the October theft, the museum said it has received offers to help recover the tiara from prestigious jewelry houses Cartier and Van Cleef. & Arpels, Mellerio, Chaumet, & Boucheron.
Thieves stole eight pieces of jewelry – not including the crown – from the Louvre Museum in a seven-minute raid last October.
Among them were a tiara, necklace and ruby earrings worn by Queen Marie-Amelie and Queen Hortense, an emerald necklace and emerald earrings belonging to Empress Marie-Louise, and a “brooch of the sacred relics of Empress Eugenie”.
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