Two people have been arrested in connection with the theft of crown jewels from Paris’s Louvre museum, justice and police officials say, a week after the heist stunned the world and sparked a massive manhunt.

The Paris prosecutor said investigators made arrests on Saturday night (local time).

One of the men taken into custody was at Paris’s Charles de Gaulle Airport, preparing to leave the country.

French media BFM TV and Le Parisien newspaper earlier reported that two suspects had been arrested and taken into custody.

Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau did not confirm the number of arrests and did not say whether any jewels had been recovered.

A police official, who was not authorised to speak publicly about the ongoing case, told the Associated Press that two men in their 30s, both known to police, were taken into custody.

He said one of the men was arrested as he tried to board a plane bound for Algeria.

The official said one suspect was identified through DNA traces.

Beccuau said earlier this week that forensics experts were analysing 150 samples at the scene.

The men can be held in police custody up to 96 hours.

Thieves took less than eight minutes last Sunday morning to steal jewels valued at €88 million ($157 million) from the world’s most-visited museum.

French officials described how the intruders used a basket lift to scale the Louvre’s façade, forced open a window, smashed display cases and fled.

The museum’s director called the incident a “terrible failure”.

Beccuau said investigators from a special police unit in charge of armed robberies, serious burglaries and art thefts made the arrests.

She rued the premature leak of the arrest details, saying it could hinder the work of more than 100 investigators “mobilised to recover the stolen jewels and apprehend all of the perpetrators”.

Beccuau said further details will be unveiled after the men’s custody period ends.

French Interior Minister Laurent Nunez praised “the investigators who have worked tirelessly, just as I asked them to, and who have always had my full confidence”.

The Louvre reopened earlier this week.

Empress Eugenie’s diamond corsage bow was stolen, while her crown was dropped as the thieves fled. Photos: X

The thieves escaped with eight objects, including a sapphire diadem, necklace and single earring from a set linked to 19th-century queens Marie-Amélie and Hortense.

They also took an emerald necklace and earrings tied to Empress Marie-Louise, Napoleon Bonaparte’s second wife, as well as a reliquary brooch.

Empress Eugénie’s diamond diadem and her large corsage-bow brooch – an imperial ensemble of rare craftsmanship – were also part of the loot.

One piece – Eugénie’s emerald-set imperial crown with more than 1300 diamonds – was later found outside the museum, damaged but repairable.

The weekend arrests came as Dutch art detective Arthur Brand – sometimes called the “Indiana Jones of the art world” – told Sky News that the stolen items were more than likely still intact.

He said it was clear the thieves involved “were not doing their first heist”, and that French police did an “amazing job” to track down two of them.

Louvre visitors and passersby met news of the arrests with relief on Sunday.

“It’s important for our heritage. A week later, it does feel a bit late, we wonder how this could even happen – but it was important that the guys were caught,” Freddy Jacquemet said.

“I think the main thing now is whether they can recover the jewels,” Diana Ramirez added.

“That’s what really matters.”

-with AAP