Gold Heist at Paris’s Natural History Museum Punctures France’s Cultural Armor
Professional crew steals native-gold specimens from Paris’s Natural History Museum amid a spate of French museum raids; cyber vulnerabilities probed.
They came for shape, not weight. Before dawn, a professional crew cut into the geology–mineralogy wing of Paris’s National Museum of Natural History and lifted several pieces of native gold—unrefined, irregular, scientifically irreplaceable. Initial estimates peg the loss around €600,000 ($700,000). The gallery is shut; police are on the case.
Investigators are probing how the thieves moved so cleanly. Local reporting points to a July cyberattack that disrupted alarms and surveillance; authorities have not confirmed whether that weakness factored into the break-in. Museum leadership described a team that knew the target and brought the right tools.
This isn’t an isolated hit. Earlier this month, Limoges lost Chinese porcelains classed as national treasures in an overnight raid; last fall, robbers smashed cases at Paris’s Cognacq-Jay Museum. The pattern is tightening, and curators are bracing for copycats.
Native gold isn’t just precious metal; it’s evidence—of geology, of history. Melt it and the specimen’s form, and much of its scientific value, is gone for good. That’s the real damage.
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