Thieves broke into a gallery at the National Museum of Natural History in Paris overnight Monday and stole nuggets of raw gold worth about $700,000, officials said on Wednesday.

The theft occurred in the geology and mineralogy gallery, the museum said in a statement. The gallery includes meteorites, giant crystals, rocks, minerals and other specimens relevant to the history of the Earth and the solar system, the museum said.

The stolen pieces were taken from a display of unrefined gold, the museum said. The theft was detected by the museum's security personnel and is under investigation by the police.

Emmanuel Skoulios, the museum's director, told BFM TV, a French news broadcaster, that he viewed the stolen pieces as "invaluable" because of their historical and scientific significance.

"We are dealing with an extremely professional team, perfectly aware of where they needed to go and with professional equipment," Mr. Skoulios said in the interview.

The French news agency AFP reported that the thieves had used a blow torch and grinder to gain access.

Native gold refers to gold in its natural state, like that retrieved from streams in nugget form or extracted from the earth in crystalline form. Untouched by human hands, it is irregular in shape, and no two pieces are alike.

To read the complete article, see:
Thieves Steal $700,000 in Gold From Natural History Museum in Paris(https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/17/us/paris-museum-gold-theft.html)

"This incident comes at a critical time for cultural institutions and museums in particular. Several public collections have indeed been targeted by thefts in recent months," the museum added.

It did not elaborate on the other robberies, but the Adrien Dubouche National Museum in Limoges in central France is known to have suffered a break-in earlier this month.

Thieves stole two dishes and a vase in Chinese porcelain classed as national treasures, with the losses estimated at 6.5 million euros. The museum holds around 18,000 works including the largest public collection of Limoges porcelain in the world, according to its website.

Last November, four men with axes and baseball bats smashed the display cases in broad daylight at the Cognacq-Jay museum in Paris, making off with several 18th-century works. That heist resulted in an insurance payment of over $4 million to the Royal Collection Trust, BBC News reported.

The next day, jewelry valued at several million euros was stolen during an armed robbery at a museum in Saone-et-Loire in central France.

To read the earlier E-Sylum article, see:
Gold worth $700,000 stolen from Paris' Natural History Museum amid string of similar heists(https://www.cbsnews.com/news/gold-stolen-from-paris-natural-history-museum/)