PARIS (AP) — The Louvre reopened on Wednesday to long lines beneath its landmark Paris glass pyramid, just three days after one of the highest-profile museum thefts of the century stunned the world for its audacity and scale.

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.

Seven minutes is all it took for thieves to rob the world’s most famous museum Sunday. Here's a minute-by-minute breakdown of how it went down.

Thieves have pulled off a daring heist at the Louvre, stealing priceless Napoleonic jewels. On Sunday, they used a basket lift to access the museum, smashed display cases, and fled with the treasures.

Commodity thieves generally don’t worry about leaving some valuable pieces behind. The Louvre robbers tried to steal a crown that had belonged to Empress Eugénie, featuring eight gold eagles, 1,354 diamonds, 1,136 rose-cut diamonds and 56 emeralds. But they abandoned it in their haste to leave.

Authorities raced against the clock Tuesday as experts in art security told NBC News it could already be too late to recover the jewels.

With nearly 9m visitors in 2024, the Louvre is the most popular museum anywhere. A former royal palace in the historic centre of Paris, it is made up of over 400 galleries, displaying 35,000 works of art.

The Louvre remained closed Monday, a day after historic jewels were stolen from the world’s most-visited museum in a daring daylight heist that prompted authorities to reassess security measures at cultural sites across France.