It sounds like a story line from a movie - a heist by a gang of robbers at the Louvre Museum in Paris, stealing some of France's most famous crown jewels, and all in broad daylight.
But that is exactly what happened this week, the thieves brazenly extending a lift to a first-floor window, some dressed as construction workers.
So how could such a daring robbery happen? And what will the likely fate be of the stolen jewels?
Tim Carpenter is the former lead investigator of the FBI's Art Crime Team in the US, now leading his own cultural property consultancy business Argus. he spoke to Emile Donovan from the States.
This emerald-and-diamond necklace was a wedding gift from Napoleon Bonaparte to his second wife Marie Louise, Duchess of Parma, when they married in 1810. Photo: Stephane de Sakutin
