Catherine Porter

A lot of things were stolen, including some of the jewels.

But then, you know, France has a really ambivalent relationship with its royal history.

It's a very proud republic.

And during one of those republics, they decided that they were going to take what was left of the royal jewels and auction them off.

And that's what they did in the late 1800s.

They auctioned off tons of these jewels.

And incredibly, the lion's share of them were bought by an American who was a founder of Tiffany's.

Oh, wow.

So, you know, the Louvre has been spending decades now trying to get them back.

Yeah.

Even this week, there was a small museum that was burgled twice in a row.

And we were looking at, like, should we do a story on this?

So it was funny that when this happened, I was like, oh, my God.

But yeah, last month, someone went into the Natural History Museum, which is only a couple subway stops away from the Louvre.

and using kind of similar tools, cut into some cases and took out a bunch of molten raw gold and made off with them.

In the same month, last month, a museum down in Limoges, southwest of Paris, thieves broke into a museum and stole some ancient china.

In November of last year, thieves using bats went in during the day also to a quite famous museum not far away from where I'm sitting.

So, you know, there's definitely a streak of these right now in France.

There's no indication that people are working together.

Yes, this seems very old-fashioned, except for in one way.