The director of the Louvre Museum acknowledged a ″terrible failure″ at the Paris monument after a stunning daylight crown jewel heist at the world’s most-visited museum, and said she offered to resign but it was refused.
According to Associated Press, the Louvre reopened earlier in the day to long lines beneath its landmark Paris glass pyramid for the first time since one of the highest-profile museum thefts of the century stunned the world with its audacity and scale.
In testimony to the French Senate, Louvre director Laurence des Cars said the museum had a damaging shortage of security cameras outside the monument and other ″weaknesses″ exposed by Sunday’s theft.
Under heavy pressure over a theft that stained France’s global image, she testified to a Senate committee that she submitted her resignation but that the culture minister refused to accept it.
″Today we are experiencing a terrible failure at the Louvre, which I take my share of responsibility in,″ she said.
The thieves slipped in and out, making off with eight pieces from France’s Crown Jewels at the world’s most-visited museum, a cultural wound that some compared to the burning of Notre-Dame cathedral in 2019.
