The Louvre Museum announced this Monday the closure to the public “for as long as necessary” of the Campana gallery, which houses nine rooms dedicated to Greek ceramics, due to the “fragility of some beams” of the building in the south wing, the Sully, according to a statement. In another of the galleries in this area of the museum is where the unusual theft of Napoleon’s eight jewels took place a month ago, perpetrated by four men who accessed the Apollo Gallery, where the stolen pieces were, by climbing a ladder.
The closure of the Campana gallery is done “as a precautionary measure” until this problem is analyzed. “Within the so-called Sully complex, the second floor has been subject to special surveillance for several years,” the art gallery says in its note.
He justifies his decision in the conclusions of a report from a technical consultancy, which was communicated to them last Friday: “Given its complex architectural design and the structural and improvement works carried out in 1930, the floors on the second floor of the wing present deficiencies.” The space houses the offices of 65 museum workers, who will have to leave the facilities before Wednesday.
The closure aggravates the controversy after the theft of the Crown jewels and after the publication of a devastating report from the French Court of Auditors, which criticizes the management carried out by the museum’s management between 2018 and 2024. The organization denounced that the art gallery had prioritized the purchase of works of art over investment in maintenance and renovation of its facilities.
The Museum is now under the microscope. Since the theft occurred, its president, Laurence de Cars, has defended itself, alleging that they were aware of the security deficiencies that the building had and that, therefore, between 2023 and 2025 additional security cameras had been installed. He also criticized the harshness of the Court’s report.
The Campana Gallery is named after the Italian marquis Giampietro Campana, who had one of the largest private collections of ceramics in Europe. Arrested in 1857 for embezzlement, his collection was confiscated and put up for sale. Napoleon III took part of it, which is displayed today in this gallery of the Louvre, which was inaugurated in 1863.
In the Sully wing, to the south, the theft of Napoleon’s jewels took place on October 19. In broad daylight, a four-man commando climbed a ladder to the balcony that gives access to the Apolo Gallery and, armed with radials, broke the display cases where these pieces were located, took them away and left the way they had entered. A robbery that lasted seven minutes.
A week later some of the members of the commando were arrested (there are currently four people in prison), but the jewels, valued at 88 million euros but of incalculable asset value, still have not appeared. It is suspected that they could have been dismantled, to melt the precious metals and sell them separately.
At the center of the controversy, the president of the Louvre appeared before the Senate and also gave accounts a week ago before an extraordinary board of directors in which she announced an increase in security measures. This Wednesday he appears before the cultural affairs commission of the National Assembly.
Laurence des Cars, who took over the reins of the art gallery in 2021, justifies that he already alerted the Minister of Culture, Rachida Dati, about the state of deterioration of some areas of the museum and “the multiplication of damage in some already very degraded spaces.” Shortly after, President Emmanuel Macron announced a renovation and modernization project, which includes the Sully space. The Louvre is the largest museum in the world and the most visited, with almost nine million visitors each year.