PARIS — The recent heist at the Louvre Museum marks another significant theft of art and valuable objects from museums worldwide. The Louvre, renowned as the most visited art museum globally, has experienced several high-profile thefts throughout its history.

One of the most infamous incidents occurred on August 21, 1911, when Leonardo da Vinci's masterpiece, the "Mona Lisa," was stolen. Initially, suspicion fell on poet Guillaume Apollinaire and artist Pablo Picasso. However, the actual thief was Vincenzo Perugia, an Italian glazier who had previously worked at the museum. He hid the painting in his Paris home for two years before attempting to sell it to a dealer in Florence. The plan failed, leading to Perugia's arrest and a seven-month prison sentence.

Another notable theft took place on September 4, 1972, at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. Three masked robbers, armed with machine guns, exploited ongoing building repairs to enter the museum through a deactivated skylight. They stole 18 paintings and approximately 40 pieces of jewelry, valued at around $2 million at the time. The stolen works included pieces attributed to renowned artists such as Rembrandt and Rubens. To date, only one painting and one piece of jewelry have been recovered.

On March 18, 1990, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston was targeted by two men posing as police officers. They successfully stole 13 artworks, including pieces by Degas and Vermeer, valued at an estimated $500 million. Despite a $10 million reward offered in 2017, none of the stolen items have been recovered.

The "Salt Cellar," a golden sculpture created by Benvenuto Cellini in 1543, was taken from Vienna's Museum of Fine Arts on May 12, 2003. The thief, familiar with the museum's alarm systems, climbed scaffolding to escape with the piece. Although the alarms were triggered, security dismissed them as false. The sculpture was recovered three years later, buried in a crate in a forest, after the thief, who had demanded a ransom, turned himself in and received a five-year prison sentence.

In a brazen daylight robbery on August 22, 2004, two armed men stole Edvard Munch's iconic works, "The Scream" and "Madonna," from the Munch Museum in Oslo. The theft took only 50 seconds, and while the artworks were later found, they were damaged. Three individuals were subsequently jailed for their involvement.

On May 20, 2010, five major works by artists including Picasso and Matisse were stolen from the Museum of Modern Art in Paris. The thief, who initially aimed to steal only one painting, took advantage of a significant security failure. None of the stolen pieces have been recovered, although the thief, dubbed the "Spiderman" robber, was sentenced to eight years in prison in 2017.

Most recently, on November 25, 2019, thieves stole 18th-century jewels valued at €113 million from the Green Vault museum in Dresden, Germany. In 2023, five members of a notorious Berlin criminal family were convicted for their roles in the theft. While much of the stolen treasure has been recovered, some jewels remain missing.