Louvre Robbery Shines Focus on Protection Concerns

Breaking into the planet's most popular museum in broad daylight, taking eight items of invaluable Napoleonic jewellery and disappearing into the city traffic on humble scooters may seem like the boldest of crimes, executed for global fame and ensuing Hollywood film treatments.

Specialists who study patterns in international art crime, however, see Sunday morning’s robbery at the Louvre as something more prosaic: the most recent in a string of smash-and-grab thefts focused more on the monetary worth of precious stones or materials than the artifacts’ significance, continuing a trend that has appeared over the last decade in Europe, Britain and the US. The venue, they propose, would have been of lesser importance to the thieves.

“One might wonder why criminals who want to steal valuable jewellery are entering a globally renowned museum rather than a Cartier store,” said an expert in art recovery. “It's straightforward: it’s because these days a Cartier store is more secure.”

A series of aggressive jewellery shop thefts mean that many outlets have strengthened their security in recent years, with security personnel on their locations and merchandise no longer kept on display overnight. Museums, meanwhile, look vulnerable, partly because of the in-built reason of being public-facing institutions in historic buildings, and partly the financial situation in many developed nations.

“Since Covid, authorities across the globe have cut back on police and the culture sector,” said Marinello. “If thieves can get into the Louvre, it demonstrates how at risk our museums have become. This is a horrible time to be a museum.”

The theft of the objects – featuring jewelry pieces made up of precious stones and hundreds of gems, the tiara of a historical figure containing nearly 2,000 diamonds and a hugely valuable diadem once possessed by a royal that the thieves dropped by the street on their way out – has naturally been compared with the historical theft of the Mona Lisa from the same museum, carried out by the worker the thief.

Better comparisons may be the 2019 theft of valuables from Dresden’s Green Vault Museum worth over €113m, the taking of a multi-million pound valuable object from Blenheim Palace the same year, the recent robbery of a large gold coin from a European museum or even a series of thefts of collector items from US mining museums.

“It's a clear trend here,” said Marinello. “Break in, take items, and dismantle them as quickly as possible.”

If the items were to remain intact, experts say, the criminals would find it hard to find a buyer. “It's impossible to sell something as recognizable as the museum's gems on the licit market”, commented Lynda Albertson of the Association for Research into Crimes against Art.

“They are too well-known, particularly given the Ministry of Culture has released images of the items. Even a individual buyer or an sales venue would want to see documentation confirming legal possession before touching such striking pieces.”

In the past, institutions were often reluctant to announce publicly about the disappearance of well-known art pieces and would stay silent out of shame. These days, as art thefts are more widely publicised, the keeping and sale of taken items is risky business for any lawbreaker.

“Taking a famous painting, it has to stay complete or it becomes worthless, and you have to devise a plan to keep it in hiding, maybe by moving it among difficult criminal actors,” said Marinello. “There's ongoing risk to the risk of an accomplice informing authorities to collect a ransom.”

For similar reasons, an art detective said it was highly improbable that the theft had been ordered. “Commissioned theft is something from films,” he said. “No one would handle these items. It’s all around the world and in all the media. If you acquire these, if you are apprehended, you go to jail. You can't display it to your friends, you cannot bequeath it to your family.”

Altering taken items by dismantling or re-cutting does reduce the value. When it comes to diamonds, it also comes with significant danger because contemporary cutting techniques give gems a larger and brighter surface area, and antique-cut stones would either attract notice or reduce value for a concealment.

Crucially, however, melting down or reshaping removes the proof 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 close as a city, and find someone to cut out the stones,” said Marinello.

The robbery at the Louvre has already brought up concerns about security measures at the museum, with a leaked state auditor report expected to be published soon pointing out “significant” and “ongoing” delays in updating equipment and noting that security cameras were missing in multiple areas. But security experts say displaying valuable objects in older structures with a steady stream of visitors comes with dangers that are impossible to eliminate completely.

“Older structures are more difficult to secure,” explained Erin Thompson. “Many of them have nice big street-facing windows that allows for thieves to escape, and there may be preservation laws in place that mean you can’t fit them with secure windows.”

The best security systems for structures should be conceptualised “like a fortress”, noted a security advisor. “It should include multiple levels to deter attackers.”

Modern buildings are equipped with advanced surveillance systems or integrated seismic detectors that alert about a broken glass in real time, but old museums may be reluctant to uglify their appearance. Laser scanners can be hard to fit to decorated surfaces. Motion and sound detectors may also have to be disabled during the daytime as crowds walk through a museum.

The timing of the Louvre raid, which took place between morning hours in Paris, was typical of modern robberies, Stürmann said. “There’s a good reason why robberies 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.”

Technological progress may have thrown up new gadgets that can raise the alarm more quickly and effectively, but it has also provided robbers new tools with which to circumvent protections. In the city, the robbers accessed the museum’s first-floor window with a vehicle-mounted ladder and breached a glass pane with a battery-powered disc cutter.

An author said the conversation in France about the 232-year-old building had primarily centered on visitor management in recent years, and less on protection.

The museum has an on-site team of about fifty full-time emergency personnel, but their purpose is mostly to safeguard the collection from blazes and flooding. “There is no rapid-response unit,” Sciolino said. “In the end, the security of the Louvre all depends on government support and funding, and currently the nation simply has no resources.”