🔗 Share this article

Breaking into the planet's most popular museum in broad daylight, grabbing eight pieces of priceless historical gems and disappearing into the city traffic on simple scooters may seem like the most audacious of crimes, carried out for global fame and ensuing movie adaptations.

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 monetary worth of valuable gems or metals than the historical importance, continuing a pattern that has appeared over the last decade in Europe, Britain and the US. The location, they suggest, would have been of secondary concern to the criminals.

“One might wonder why criminals who want to steal expensive jewellery are entering a world-famous museum rather than a Cartier store,” stated Christopher A Marinello. “The answer is simple: it’s because nowadays a Cartier store is more secure.”

A spate of violent retail store thefts indicate that many stores have strengthened their protection in the past few years, with security personnel on their premises and wares no longer kept on display overnight. Museums, meanwhile, look vulnerable, partly because of the inherent reason of being accessible institutions in historic buildings, and also the current economic climate in many western countries.

“After the pandemic, governments across the globe have cut back 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 objects – featuring necklaces made up of eight sapphires and 631 diamonds, the tiara of Empress Eugénie featuring thousands of diamonds and a extremely expensive diadem once possessed by a royal that the robbers dropped by the roadside on their way out – has naturally been compared with the 1911 theft of the Mona Lisa from the same museum, carried out by the Italian handyman Vincenzo Peruggia.

Better points of reference may be the 2019 burglary of valuables from a German institution worth over €113m, the taking of a £4.75m gold toilet from a UK landmark the same year, the 2017 robbery of a large gold coin from Berlin’s Bode Museum or even a spate of robberies of collector items from US mining museums.

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

If the items were to stay whole, experts say, the criminals would find it hard to find a buyer. “There’s no way to trade something as recognizable as the Louvre’s jewels on the legal marketplace”, said Lynda Albertson of the a relevant organization.

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

In the past, museums were often hesitant to announce publicly about the loss of famous works of art and would stay silent out of shame. Now, as art thefts are more reported on, the storage and selling of stolen art is dangerous for any criminal.

“If you steal a Picasso, it has to remain intact or it becomes valueless, and you have to devise a plan to keep it in hiding, maybe by passing it around dangerous individuals,” noted Marinello. “And you’re constantly exposed to the danger of an accomplice informing authorities to collect a reward.”

For comparable factors, an art detective said it was vanishingly unlikely that the robbery had been ordered. “Commissioned theft is something from films,” he said. “No one would handle these items. It's global news and in all the media. If you buy this, if you are apprehended, you end up in prison. You cannot show it to your friends, you cannot leave it to your children.”

Modifying taken items by dismantling or reshaping does reduce the worth. When it comes to diamonds, it also comes with significant danger because contemporary cutting techniques give gems a bigger and lighter surface area, and older-style stones would either draw unwanted attention or reduce value for a concealment.

Importantly, however, melting down or re-cutting eliminates the proof of the crime. “I suspect that the robbers will try to take the items to locations with gem knowledge like a country, another nation or even as close as a city, and find someone to cut out the stones,” said Marinello.

The heist at the Louvre has already raised questions about security measures at the museum, with a unauthorized official review expected to be released soon pointing out “significant” and “ongoing” delays in updating systems and observing that surveillance were missing in many rooms. But security experts say displaying valuable objects in historic buildings with a constant flow of visitors comes with risks that are not possible to eliminate completely.

“Historic buildings are more difficult to secure,” explained Erin Thompson. “Many of them have large accessible windows that allows for thieves to escape, and there may be building protection statutes in place that mean you are unable to install them with proper bulletproof glass.”

The best security systems for buildings should be conceptualised “as a stronghold”, noted a security advisor. “It should include several layers to repel intruders.”

Contemporary structures are equipped with state-of-the-art external CCTV cameras or in-built seismic detectors that raise alarm about a smashed window in real time, but old museums may be hesitant to alter their exteriors. Detection devices can be hard to fit to decorated surfaces. Motion and sound detectors may also have to be disabled during the day as hordes of visitors walk through a museum.

The schedule of the robbery, which took place between 9.30am and 9.40am in Paris, was typical of recent thefts, Stürmann said. “There’s a good reason why robberies tend to happen at either start or end of day. Frequently when security rotate and before the museum is full of visitors who effectively act as extra protection.”

Advances in technology may have introduced new gadgets that can raise the alarm more quickly and efficiently, but it has also given thieves new methods with which to circumvent security measures. In Paris, the thieves accessed the museum’s first-floor window with a vehicle-mounted ladder and cut through a glass pane with a electric tool.

Elaine Sciolino said the discussion in the country about the 232-year-old building had mostly focused on visitor management in the past decade, and not as much on protection.

The institution has an in-house team of about fifty permanent firefighters, but their mission is mainly to protect the collection from blazes and water damage. “There isn't a rapid-response unit,” Sciolino said. “In the end, the security of the Louvre all comes down to government support and money, and currently France lacks sufficient money.”