Louvre Heist Shines Focus on Protection Issues

Entering the planet's most popular art institution in the middle of the day, taking eight pieces of priceless Napoleonic jewellery and disappearing into the city traffic on humble scooters may seem like the boldest of crimes, executed for international notoriety and ensuing movie adaptations.

Specialists who observe patterns in global cultural theft, however, see Sunday morning’s heist at the Louvre as a more practical matter: the latest in a series of quick-hit thefts focused more on the material value of precious stones or materials than the artifacts’ significance, perpetuating a pattern that has appeared over the last decade in Europe, Britain and the US. The venue, they suggest, would have been of secondary concern to the thieves.

“You may ask why thieves who want to steal expensive jewellery are breaking into a globally renowned museum rather than a luxury jewelry store,” stated Christopher A Marinello. “It's straightforward: it’s because these days a Cartier store is better protected.”

A series of violent retail store thefts indicate that many outlets have beefed up their security in the past few years, with armed guards on their locations and merchandise no longer shown overnight. Museums, meanwhile, look vulnerable, partly because of the in-built factor of being accessible institutions in historic buildings, and also the current economic climate in many developed nations.

“Since Covid, governments across the world have reduced spending on police and the culture sector,” noted Marinello. “If thieves can get into the Louvre, it demonstrates how at risk our institutions have become. This is a horrible time to be a museum.”

The robbery of the objects – including jewelry pieces made up of eight sapphires and 631 diamonds, the tiara of Empress Eugénie containing thousands of diamonds and a hugely valuable diadem once possessed by Napoleon III’s wife that the thieves dropped by the street on their way out – has naturally drawn comparisons with the 1911 theft of the Mona Lisa from the Louvre, performed by the Italian handyman the thief.

Better points of reference may be the recent theft of jewellery from a German institution worth over €113m, the theft of a £4.75m valuable object from a UK landmark the same year, the recent heist of a valuable item from a European museum or even a series of robberies of sports memorabilia from American institutions.

“There’s a simple pattern here,” said Marinello. “Break in, take items, and dismantle them as rapidly as possible.”

If the artefacts were to stay whole, specialists say, the criminals would struggle to find a buyer. “It's impossible to trade something as recognizable as the museum's gems on the legal marketplace”, said an art crime researcher of the Association for Research into Crimes against Art.

“They would be immediately recognised, especially given the cultural authorities has released images of the pieces. Even a private collector or an sales venue would want to see paperwork establishing legal possession before handling such remarkable pieces.”

In the past, institutions were often reluctant to announce publicly about the loss of famous works of art and would remain quiet out of shame. These days, as art thefts are more reported on, the storage and sale of stolen art is dangerous for any lawbreaker.

“If you steal a famous painting, it has to remain intact or it becomes valueless, and you have to devise a scheme to keep it in hiding, perhaps by moving it among difficult criminal actors,” said Marinello. “And you’re constantly exposed to the risk of an partner telling the police to collect a ransom.”

For comparable factors, an investigator said it was vanishingly unlikely that the theft had been ordered. “Commissioned theft is something from Hollywood movies,” he said. “Nobody would touch this. It’s all around the world and in all the media. If you buy this, if you are apprehended, you end up in prison. You cannot show it to your acquaintances, you cannot leave it to your children.”

Modifying taken items by melting down or reshaping does reduce the worth. When it comes to diamonds, it also comes with significant danger because contemporary methods give stones a bigger and lighter appearance, and antique-cut stones would either attract notice or reduce value for a coverup.

Crucially, however, melting down or reshaping eliminates the evidence of the theft. “My guess is that the robbers will try to bring the items to places with gem knowledge like Israel, another nation or even as nearby as a city, and locate an expert to remove the stones,” suggested Marinello.

The heist at the Louvre has already raised questions about protective steps at the museum, with a unauthorized state auditor report expected to be released next month pointing out “considerable” and “ongoing” delays in modernizing equipment and observing that security cameras were lacking in multiple areas. But security experts say displaying precious items in historic buildings with a steady stream of guests comes with dangers that are impossible to eliminate completely.

“Older structures are much harder to protect,” explained an art crime professor. “Many of them have large accessible windows that allows for criminals to escape, and there may be building protection statutes in place that mean you are unable to install them with proper bulletproof glass.”

The most solid security systems for buildings should be designed “as a stronghold”, noted a security advisor. “There should be several layers to deter attackers.”

Modern buildings are equipped with state-of-the-art external CCTV cameras or in-built vibration sensors that raise alarm about a smashed window in immediately, but historic institutions may be hesitant to alter their exteriors. Detection devices can be hard to install to stuccoed ceilings. Sensors may also have to be turned off during the day as hordes of visitors walk through a museum.

The timing of the robbery, which took place between 9.30am and 9.40am in Paris, was typical of modern robberies, Stürmann said. “There’s a good reason why thefts tend to happen at either opening or closing times. Frequently when guards rotate and before the museum is crowded who effectively act as extra protection.”

Advances in technology may have introduced new devices that can raise the alarm more rapidly and efficiently, but it has also given thieves new tools with which to bypass protections. In the city, the thieves accessed the museum’s first-floor window with a mobile equipment and breached a glass pane with a battery-powered disc cutter.

An author said the discussion in the country about the 232-year-old building had primarily focused on crowd control in the past decade, and not as much on protection.

The museum has an in-house brigade of about 50 full-time emergency personnel, but their purpose is mostly to protect the artworks from fires and water damage. “There is no rapid-response unit,” Sciolino said. “In the end, the security of the Louvre all depends on political will and funding, and at present France lacks sufficient money.”