A crown made of gold, diamonds and emeralds that once belonged to Empress Eugenie of France was damaged by thieves during Sunday's heist at the world-famous Louvre Museum in Paris, according to the French Culture Minister.

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

The director of the Louvre Wednesday admitted there was inadequate security camera coverage of the outside walls of the museum, three days after a brazen daytime heist stunned the French capital.The heist has renewed scrutiny of security at French museums.

A new video has emerged showing what could be the Louvre thieves in action as they carried out Sunday’s daylight robbery at Paris’s world-famous museum. The footage, obtained by French broadcaster BFMTV, purportedly shows what has been called one of the most brazen art thefts in recent memory.

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.”

Thieves broke into the Louvre in Paris — the world's most visited museum — early Sunday morning. Museum officials said they stole jewelry and fled.

Brazen robbers stole priceless French crown jewels from the Louvre Museum's Apollo Gallery in broad daylight Saturday in what an expert calls a "targeted heist."

Video from the crime scene outside the Louvre in Paris appears to show the tools used by thieves who broke into the museum on Sunday, stealing an “inestimable” value of jewels.