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 carjacked the furniture lift used to break into the Louvre for the smash-and-grab raid nine days before the crown jewel heist.

The only camera monitoring the exterior wall of the Louvre where they broke in was pointing away from the first-floor balcony that led to Gallery of Apollo housing the jewels, she said. "We failed these jewels," she said, adding that no-one was protected from "brutal criminals - not even the Louvre".

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