Louvre Heist Shines Spotlight on Protection Concerns

Breaking into the world’s most-visited museum in broad daylight, taking eight items of invaluable Napoleonic jewellery and vanishing into Paris traffic on humble scooters may seem like the boldest of crimes, carried out for international notoriety and subsequent Hollywood film treatments.

Specialists who observe patterns in global cultural theft, however, see the recent robbery at the Louvre as a more practical matter: the most recent in a string of smash-and-grab thefts centered more on the material value of precious stones or materials than the artifacts’ significance, continuing a trend that has emerged over the last decade in Europe, Britain and the US. The venue, they propose, would have been of secondary concern to the thieves.

“One might wonder why criminals who want to steal expensive jewellery are entering a globally renowned museum rather than a Cartier store,” stated Christopher A Marinello. “It's straightforward: it’s because these days a high-end boutique is better protected.”

A series of aggressive jewellery shop thefts mean that many stores have strengthened their protection in recent years, with security personnel on their premises and wares no longer kept on display overnight. Cultural institutions, meanwhile, look vulnerable, in part because of the inherent factor of being accessible institutions in historic buildings, and also the financial situation in many western countries.

“Since Covid, authorities across the world have reduced spending on law enforcement and the arts funding,” noted Marinello. “With criminals entering the Louvre, it shows how at risk our institutions have become. This is a horrible time to be a museum.”

The robbery of the items – including jewelry pieces made up of eight sapphires and hundreds of gems, the crown of a historical figure containing thousands of diamonds and a hugely valuable crown once owned by Napoleon III’s wife that the robbers dropped by the roadside on their way out – has naturally drawn comparisons with the historical theft of the famous painting from the same museum, performed by the worker Vincenzo Peruggia.

Better points of reference may be the 2019 theft of valuables from a German institution worth over €113m, the theft of a £4.75m valuable object from a UK landmark the that year, the recent robbery of a valuable item from a European museum or even a spate of robberies of collector items from US mining museums.

“There’s a simple pattern here,” explained Marinello. “Smash, grab, and melt it down as rapidly as possible.”

If the artefacts were to remain intact, experts say, the thieves would find it hard to sell them. “It's impossible to trade something as recognizable as the Louvre’s jewels on the licit market”, said Lynda Albertson of the Association for Research into Crimes against Art.

“They would be immediately recognised, especially given the cultural authorities has published photos of the items. Even a private collector or an sales venue would want to see documentation establishing legal possession before touching such striking pieces.”

In the past, institutions were often hesitant to announce publicly about the loss of well-known art pieces and would stay silent out of embarrassment. These days, as art thefts are more reported on, the keeping and selling of stolen art is risky business for any criminal.

“Taking a famous painting, it has to remain intact or it becomes valueless, and you have to conceive of a plan to keep it in hiding, maybe by passing it around dangerous individuals,” noted 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 commissioned. “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 acquire these, if you are apprehended, you go to jail. You cannot show it to your friends, you cannot leave it to your family.”

Altering stolen works by dismantling or reshaping does reduce the value. When it comes to gems, it also comes with significant danger because modern cutting techniques give gems a bigger and lighter appearance, and older-style stones would either attract notice or reduce value for a coverup.

Importantly, however, dismantling or re-cutting eliminates the proof of the theft. “I suspect that the robbers will try to bring the items to places with gem knowledge like Israel, another nation or even as nearby as Antwerp, and find someone to cut out the gems,” said Marinello.

The robbery at the Louvre has already brought up concerns about protective steps at the museum, with a leaked state auditor report expected to be released soon pointing out “significant” and “persistent” delays in updating equipment and noting that surveillance were missing in many rooms. But specialists say showing precious items in historic buildings with a constant flow of visitors comes with risks that are not possible to remove entirely.

“Older structures are much harder to secure,” said an art crime professor. “They often have large accessible windows that makes it easy for criminals to get away, and there may be building protection statutes in place that mean you can’t fit them with secure windows.”

The best security systems for structures should be designed “as a stronghold”, noted a security advisor. “There should be several layers to deter intruders.”

Contemporary structures are fitted with state-of-the-art external CCTV cameras or in-built vibration sensors that alert about a broken glass in immediately, but historic institutions may be hesitant to alter their appearance. Laser scanners can be difficult to fit to decorated surfaces. Motion and sound detectors may also have to be disabled during the daytime as crowds stomp through a museum.

The timing of the robbery, which occurred between morning hours local time, was typical of modern robberies, Stürmann said. “It's logical why thefts tend to happen at either start or end of day. It’s often when security change their shifts and before the museum is crowded who actually act as extra protection.”

Advances in technology may have thrown up new devices that can raise the alarm more rapidly and efficiently, but it has also provided robbers new tools with which to circumvent protections. In the city, the thieves reached the museum’s upper level with a mobile equipment and cut through a window with a battery-powered disc cutter.

An author said the discussion in France about the historic structure had primarily focused on crowd control in recent years, and less on security.

The institution has an in-house team of about fifty permanent emergency personnel, but their purpose is mainly to protect the collection from blazes and flooding. “There isn't a quick reaction team,” Sciolino said. “In the end, the safety of the Louvre all comes down to government support and funding, and at present the nation lacks sufficient resources.”