Nearly 10 months after a high-profile jewelry heist forced the closure of Apollo Gallery, one of the Louvre’s most ornate spaces is welcoming visitors again—but travelers shouldn’t expect to find its most famous treasures inside.
The Galerie d’Apollon, or Apollo Gallery, reopened on July 22 for the first time since thieves broke into the museum on October 19, 2025, and stole eight pieces from the French Crown Jewels collection. While visitors can once again step inside the gilded gallery, the remaining crown jewels have been removed and will eventually be displayed in a more secure location elsewhere in the museum.
According to a press release, the Louvre Museum removed all items and display cases in the gallery “to restore the painted and sculpted wall decorations to their rightful place.”
For visitors, that makes the Apollo Gallery a considerably different experience than it was before the robbery. With the jewelry cases gone, what’s left are the gallery’s gilded walls, tapestries, sculptures, and elaborate painted ceiling—masterpieces unto themselves.
The 201-foot-long space dates back to the reign of Louis XIV. After a fire destroyed part of the Louvre in 1661, the king commissioned architect Louis Le Vau to rebuild the room, with painter Charles Le Brun overseeing much of its design. Apollo, the Greek god of the sun, became the theme of the gallery—a fitting choice for Louis XIV, also known as the Sun King. The gallery would also go on to inspire the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles.
“It is one of the most iconic spaces in the Louvre, with its rich decor of stucco, paintings, and tapestries,” stated a museum press release.
The gallery wasn’t finished during his reign. Artists continued adding to it over the next two centuries, and today its ceiling includes works by some of France’s best-known painters. At its center is Eugène Delacroix’s Apollo Slaying the Serpent Python, a massive ceiling painting completed in 1850.
For Louvre visitors, it’s an easy addition to a day at the museum. The Apollo Gallery is Room 705 on the first floor of the Denon Wing, which is also home to the Mona Lisa and Winged Victory of Samothrace. It sits between the Salon Carré and the Grande Galerie, so travelers can pass through it while exploring some of the museum’s most popular sections.
What happened to the crown jewels?
Before the heist, the Apollo Gallery displayed some of France’s most important royal gems and jewelry, including surviving pieces of the French Crown Jewels collection (others were stolen during the French Revolution or sold in 1887), including pieces associated with Queen Marie-Amélie, Queen Hortense, Empress Marie-Louise, and Empress Eugénie.
Eight pieces, collectively valued at an estimated €88 million (about US$102 million), were taken during the October 2025 robbery and remain missing. A ninth piece, Empress Eugénie’s diamond- and emerald-encrusted crown, was dropped during the thieves’ escape and recovered outside the museum.
Several of the collection’s best-known gems weren’t taken, however, including the Regent, Sancy, and Hortensia diamonds. But travelers won’t find those on display in the Apollo Gallery anymore, either.
Instead, the Louvre plans to bring the remaining crown jewels together in a new gallery elsewhere in the museum. Louvre director Christophe Leribault has said the space will be windowless and designed with tighter security than their former home. The museum hasn’t yet announced when the new gallery will open, so for now, visitors hoping to see the French Crown Jewels will have to wait.
The new gallery planning is happening alongside the much larger Louvre New Renaissance renovation, a roughly decade-long project aimed at updating aging infrastructure, easing overcrowding, and eventually giving the Mona Lisa its own gallery and entrance.
What to know if you’re visiting the Louvre
There is one catch to the Apollo Gallery’s reopening: It may not be open every day.
Individual rooms at the museum can close because of staffing, maintenance, or other operational issues, so travelers who particularly want to see the Apollo Gallery should check the Louvre’s online list of open galleries before their visit.
That’s especially important during the busy summer season. Through August 31, 2026, admission to the Louvre also requires visitors to reserve a time slot in advance, including many people who would otherwise receive free admission (such as anyone under 18 years old and European Union citizens or residents under 26 years old).
There’s also the potential for the Apollo Gallery to be more crowded than usual, both because it has been closed and because the heist has likely increased interest around the space. It won’t have been the first time that a robbery piqued visitors’ interest. In 1911, three Italian handymen stole da Vinci’s Mona Lisa. It remained missing for 28 months, and after it was finally returned following a failed attempt at selling the masterpiece, the artwork, which was little known before the theft, eventually became one of the most recognizable paintings in the world.
The Louvre is open from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Monday, Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday, with extended hours until 9 p.m. on Wednesday and Friday. It’s closed on Tuesdays.
