Apollo Gallery Louvre: the French Crown Jewels

The Apollo Gallery at the Louvre (Galerie d’Apollon) is a grand hall on level 1 of the Denon wing that Louis XIV had decorated in the 17th century. Today it holds part of the French Crown Jewels, along with hardstone vases and a collection of snuffboxes. It is the gallery where the jewel heist of October 19, 2025 took place. Your general museum ticket, which costs 22 € or 32 € depending on where you live, covers it at no extra charge.

What is the Apollo Gallery at the Louvre?

It is a long vaulted corridor of the old royal palace, built above the summer apartments of Anne of Austria on the southwest side of the Cour Carrée, according to Spanish Wikipedia. Its history has four key moments:

Date	What happened
1566	Charles IX begins the Petite Galerie; the floor above was then a terrace
1595–1610	Under Henri IV a floor is added: the Gallery of Kings, with portraits of kings and queens
February 6, 1661	A fire during the staging of a ballet destroys the floor and the decoration
1661–1663	Louis Le Vau rebuilds it and Charles Le Brun designs the decoration for Louis XIV

Le Brun’s theme is the Sun: its course through the hours, the months and the continents, and behind it the virtues of the Sun King. Spanish Wikipedia describes it as Louis XIV’s first royal gallery and the model for the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles, built twenty years later. When the king left for Versailles in 1679, the work stopped.

The vault was finished much later. In the 18th century the Royal Academy of Painting gradually filled the gaps, and between 1848 and 1854 the architect Félix Duban restored it and commissioned the central painting from Eugène Delacroix: Apollo Slaying the Python. The walls carry 28 tapestries from the Gobelins manufactory, woven between 1851 and 1861. The last major restoration, involving more than fifty specialists, ran from 2002 to 2004.

Which Crown Jewels does the Apollo Gallery hold?

The gallery displays part of the French Crown Jewels, which belong to the museum’s Decorative Arts department (Spanish Wikipedia). The most famous piece is the Regent diamond, which the 2025 thieves did not take.

Bear in mind that what you see is a small part of what once existed. Most of the Crown Jewels were sold by the Third Republic in 1885, including Napoleon III’s crown, according to Spanish Wikipedia.

What is the story of Empress Eugénie’s crown?

The crown was made in 1855 for Eugénie de Montijo, wife of Napoleon III, for that year’s Exposition Universelle in Paris. This is how the Louvre and Spanish Wikipedia describe it:

Maker: the jeweler Alexandre-Gabriel Lemonnier, who made the emperor’s crown at the same time (Louvre catalog entry).
Materials: gold, diamonds and 56 emeralds. The emeralds belonged to the emperor; fewer Crown stones were used for the diamonds than in Napoleon III’s crown.
Shape: eight arches of chased gold in the shape of eagles alternate with diamond palmettes; on top sits a diamond orb with a cross.
History: the crown was returned to the empress, by then in exile, in 1875. She left it to Princess Marie-Clotilde Napoléon, Countess of Witt. It came up at auction in 1988 and entered the Louvre that year with the involvement of Roberto Polo.

Napoleon III’s matching crown was sold in 1885 and is now lost, according to the Louvre’s catalog entry. Eugénie died in July 1920.

What was stolen from the Apollo Gallery?

On October 19, 2025, thieves got in through a window and took eight jewels from two display cases: pieces of the sapphire parure of Queens Marie-Amélie and Hortense, Empress Marie-Louise’s emerald necklace and earrings, and Empress Eugénie’s tiara, large corsage bow and reliquary brooch. Eugénie’s crown fell as they fled and was recovered, damaged, the same day. We cover it date by date, with sources, in what we know about the 2025 Louvre heist.

It was not the first theft in this room. On the night of December 15 to 16, 1976, three thieves climbed in using scaffolding, tied up two guards and took the coronation sword of Charles X, which has never been found (Spanish Wikipedia).

On October 27, 2026, the Louvre’s catalog listed Eugénie’s crown as “not on display”.

How do you visit the Apollo Gallery?

The gallery is on level 1 of the Denon wing, the same floor as the Mona Lisa (room 711) and the Winged Victory of Samothrace (room 703). The Louvre map helps you place it.

Three practical tips:

Check the room calendar the day before. The Louvre publishes which rooms open each day in its official room calendar, and the Apollo Gallery is listed there by name.
Look at the ceiling, not just the cases. Le Brun’s vault, with Delacroix’s Apollo at its center, is the heart of the gallery’s decorative scheme.
Book a timed ticket. General admission costs 22 € for nationals or residents of the European Economic Area and 32 € for everyone else, and the museum is closed on Tuesdays.

If you want to understand how the Louvre went from royal palace to museum, read the Louvre history. And if you would rather explore level 1 of Denon with a guide, the Louvre guided tour includes admission and the masterpieces of that wing.