The most famous art heists in history, from the Mona Lisa to a golden toilet

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Nine pieces of jewellery from the collection of Napoleon and the Empress have been stolen from the Louvre.

Thieves reportedly used a basket lift to reach the museum, which is the world’s most visited, on Sunday morning.

The heist occurred as tourists were inside the Galerie d’Apollon, where part of the French Crown Jewels are displayed.

The museum closed for the day as the police sealed gates and investigated.

According to French culture minister Rachida Dati, a piece of jewellery was found in the wake of the thieves’ escape. Several French media outlets are reporting that the item is a 19th-century crown belonging to Empress Eugenie – the wife of Napoleon III – and has been found broken.

Here is a look at some other famous heists worldwide.

The Louvre has a long history of thefts and attempted robberies. The most famous came in 1911, when the Mona Lisa vanished from its frame, stolen by Vincenzo Peruggia, a former worker who hid inside the museum and walked out with the painting under his coat.

It was recovered two years later in Florence — an episode that helped make Leonardo da Vinci’s portrait the world’s best-known artwork.

It has been called the biggest art heist in US history, but 35 years later, the theft of 13 works from Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum remains unsolved.

In the early hours of 18 March 1990, two men disguised as Boston police officers talked their way into the museum by saying they were responding to a call. They overpowered two security guards, bound them with duct tape and spent 81 minutes pilfering 13 works of art, including masterpieces by Rembrandt, Vermeer, Degas and Manet.

Authorities say the artwork is worth perhaps as much as a half-billion dollars. Museum officials say it is priceless because it cannot be replaced.

Some of the works, including Rembrandt’s Storm on the Sea of Galilee, were cut from their frames. Those frames hang empty in the museum to this day.

In 2017, burglars at Berlin’s Bode Museum stole a 100-kilogram (220-pound) Canadian solid-gold coin known as the “Big Maple Leaf”.

The suspects are believed to have smashed a protective case and then managed to lift the coin out of a museum window before fleeing along a rail track with their haul in a wheelbarrow. After getting away with it, authorities believe they later cut up the coin, valued at about €3.75 million ($4.33 million), and sold the pieces.

Three men, including a museum security guard, were later convicted.

Two years later, thieves smashed vitrines in Dresden’s Green Vault, one of the world’s oldest museums, and carried off diamond-studded royal jewels worth hundreds of millions of euros.

Officials said they made off with three “priceless” sets of 18th century jewellery that would be impossible to sell on the open market.

Part of the haul was later recovered. Five men were convicted and a sixth was acquitted.

A thief who swiped a golden toilet from an English palace was convicted earlier this year along with an accomplice who helped cash in on the spoils of the 18-carat work of art insured for nearly £5 million (more than US$6 million).

Michael Jones had used the fully functioning one-of-a-kind latrine as he did reconnaissance at Blenheim Palace — the country mansion where wartime leader Winston Churchill was born — the day before the theft, prosecutors said. He described the experience as “splendid”.

He returned before dawn on 14 September 2019, with at least two other men armed with sledgehammers and crowbars. They smashed a window and pried the toilet from its plumbing within five minutes, leaving a damaging flood in their wake as they escaped in stolen vehicles.

The satirical work, titled America by Italian conceptual artist Maurizio Cattelan, poked fun at excessive wealth. It weighed just over 215 pounds (98 kilograms). The value of the gold at the time was £2.8 million ($3.6 million). The purloined potty has never been recovered but is believed to have been cut up and sold.

The piece had previously been on display at The Guggenheim Museum in New York. The museum had offered the work to US President Donald Trump during his first term in office after he had asked to borrow a Van Gogh painting.