Thieves used a stolen truck-mounted moving lift to scale the Louvre and steal royal jewels worth over $100 million in a lightning-fast Paris heist.

The brazen robbery on Sunday has put a spotlight on security protocols in the sprawling museum, which have been tested over the years by break-ins and thefts.

Laurence des Cars is speaking for the first time since a gang of masked thieves - who remain at large - carried out Sunday's robbery.

What we know about the Louvre jewel heist, plus a look at thefts from museums in the Philly area over the years.

The world was shocked to learn of the brazen daytime burglary at the venerated Paris institution, but art experts told the Daily Beast why they could have predicted it.

In that sense, the Louvre heist wasn’t really art crime, Vernon Rapley, a former leader of the London police force’s art squad, told my colleague Alex Marshall. It was “commodity theft.”

Officials say suspects used a truck-mounted basket lift and power tools to carry out the brazen Sunday morning theft at the world’s most-visited museum.

Museums are notoriously hard to protect. The Paris heist may have more in common with a "smash and grab" than a glamorous movie plot.

Masked thieves stole priceless jewels from the Louvre on Sunday morning. The Paris museum has suffered a string of successful art heists, dating back to the theft of the Mona Lisa in 1911.

While many tourists visiting the Louvre on Wednesday will want to see the crime scene, that area of the iconic French museum remains closed for an investigation into the massive jewelry theft, with the haul estimated by experts to be worth $102 million.