Bulgari’s recently renovated store on Paris’s Place Vendome has been hit by armed robbers for the second time in as many years.
Over the weekend, a trio of thieves made off with nearly $8 million worth of jewelry from Bulgari’s flagship store in Paris. The Roman jeweler’s opulent Place Vendôme store was robbed in broad daylight last Saturday, marking the second time the boutique has been looted since September 2021. Police and prosecutors say three people (two carrying assault rifles) arrived on two motorbikes and entered the store around 1:45 p.m. local time. After hitting a security guard, they pilfered jewelry and watches before making an escape.
Video footage of the incident, taken by local bystanders, has been circulating around the web showing one of the robbers (dressed in all black with a helmet on) walking around outside the flagship with a rifle in hand, pointing people away from the store. The robbery took just a few minutes before “the raiders then got back on to their two black motorbikes, and calmly escaped the square,” a source told The Daily Mail. And although the shop is next door to The Ministry of Justice, ironically, no police were on hand in the area during the robbery.
Two years ago, the same store was targeted by armed robbers who reportedly fled the scene with about £10 million worth of items. One of the thieves was later wounded by a police officer in a shoot-out at the Les Halles shopping center, roughly a mile-and-a-half away. All three of the burglars from the 2021 incident were arrested by June 2022. The trio was charged and found guilty of armed robbery.
High-profile armed robberies in Place Vendôme, and across Paris, have been on the rise in the past year. Four rifle-toting robbers stole jewels and more from the nearby Chanel store in 2022, and a Chaumet store near the Champs-Elysees was robbed of nearly $2.5 million worth of goods last July.
