Attempted robbery at the Musée Nissim de Camondo in Paris: the thief broke the back window, the alarm forced him to flee empty-handed

An attempted robbery at the Musée Nissim de Camondo in Paris was foiled on Saturday evening, after the thief was frightened by the alarm system and fled without taking anything, as ARTnews reports, referring to the newspaper Le Parisien. According to reports, the suspect entered the building through the gardens at the back and broke a window, but the activation of the security system forced him to flee empty-handed. Paris police have launched an investigation and are analysing security camera footage.

According to the prosecution, the suspect taken into custody is a man born in 1998, who managed to get inside the museum walls, but whose objective failed completely — no work was reported stolen. His method, breaking a window at the back, shows preparation but not professional execution, the French press notes.

The Musée Nissim de Camondo, housed in the early 20th-century mansion on Rue Monceau, next to Parc Monceau, holds one of the richest collections of French decorative arts of the second half of the 18th century — furniture, Sèvres porcelain and Aubusson tapestries. The irony of the case is that the museum has been closed to the public since the end of 2024, for security works and reconstruction, and its reopening has been postponed until 2030.

The building was constructed in 1911–1914 for Count Moïse de Camondo, the French Jewish banker, who donated it and the collection to Les Arts Décoratifs in memory of his son, Nissim, a pilot who fell in the First World War. The collection still stands as a monument to French decorative art — and on Saturday night, it also escaped another attack on French cultural heritage, which comes after a series of museum robberies that shook France.