Paris Museum Heist Shines Focus on Protection Concerns

Entering the world’s most-visited art institution in broad daylight, grabbing eight items of invaluable Napoleonic jewellery and vanishing into Paris traffic on simple scooters may seem like the most audacious of crimes, carried out for global fame and ensuing movie adaptations.

Specialists who study trends in international art crime, however, see Sunday morning’s heist at the Louvre as something more prosaic: the most recent in a series of quick-hit thefts focused more on the material value of valuable gems or materials than the artifacts’ significance, perpetuating a trend that has appeared over the last ten years in Europe, the UK and the US. The venue, they suggest, would have been of secondary concern to the thieves.

“You may ask why criminals who want to take expensive jewellery are breaking into a globally renowned museum rather than a Cartier store,” stated an expert in art recovery. “The answer is simple: it’s because these days a Cartier store is better protected.”

A spate of aggressive retail store thefts indicate that many stores have beefed up their security in the past few years, with security personnel on their locations and merchandise no longer kept on display overnight. Museums, on the other hand, look vulnerable, in part because of the inherent factor of being public-facing institutions in older structures, and partly the current economic climate in many developed nations.

“Since Covid, governments across the globe have cut back on law enforcement and the culture sector,” noted Marinello. “With criminals entering the Louvre, it demonstrates how vulnerable our museums 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 631 diamonds, the crown of a historical figure containing nearly 2,000 diamonds and a extremely expensive crown once possessed by Napoleon III’s wife that the thieves left by the street on their way out – has inevitably drawn comparisons with the 1911 theft of the famous painting from the Louvre, carried out by the Italian handyman the thief.

Better comparisons may be the recent burglary of jewellery from Dresden’s Green Vault Museum worth over €113m, the taking of a multi-million pound gold toilet from Blenheim Palace the that year, the recent heist of a large gold coin from Berlin’s Bode Museum or even a series of thefts of sports memorabilia from American institutions.

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

If the items were to stay whole, experts say, the thieves would struggle to find a buyer. “It's impossible to sell something as recognizable as the Louvre’s jewels on the licit market”, said an art crime researcher of the a relevant organization.

“They are too well-known, especially given the cultural authorities has published photos of the pieces. Even a private collector or an sales venue would want to see paperwork confirming proper ownership before handling 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 embarrassment. Now, as art thefts are more widely publicised, the storage and selling of stolen art is dangerous for any lawbreaker.

“If you steal a Picasso, it has to remain intact or it becomes valueless, and you have to conceive of a scheme to conceal it, perhaps by passing it around difficult criminal actors,” noted Marinello. “There's ongoing risk to the risk of an accomplice informing authorities to cash in a ransom.”

For comparable factors, an art detective said it was highly improbable that the theft had been ordered. “Stolen to order is something from films,” he said. “No one would handle these items. It's global news and in all the newspapers. If you buy this, if you get caught, you go to jail. You can't display it to your friends, you cannot leave it to your children.”

Modifying stolen works by melting down or reshaping does lower the value. When it comes to diamonds, it also comes with significant danger because contemporary cutting techniques give stones a larger and brighter appearance, and older-style stones would either attract notice or barter the price down for a coverup.

Crucially, however, melting down or reshaping removes the evidence of the theft. “I suspect that the Louvre thieves will try to bring the stolen goods to locations with gem knowledge like a country, another nation or even as close as Antwerp, and find someone to cut out the stones,” said Marinello.

The robbery at the Louvre has already raised questions about security measures at the museum, with a leaked state auditor report expected to be published next month criticising “significant” and “ongoing” slow progress in modernizing equipment and noting that security cameras were missing in multiple areas. But security experts say showing precious items in historic buildings with a constant flow of guests comes with risks that are impossible to remove entirely.

“Historic buildings are much harder to protect,” said Erin Thompson. “They often 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 proper bulletproof glass.”

The best protective measures for structures should be designed “as a stronghold”, noted Peter Stürmann. “It should include several layers to repel intruders.”

Contemporary structures are equipped with advanced surveillance systems or integrated seismic detectors that alert about a smashed window in real time, but old museums may be reluctant to uglify their appearance. Laser scanners can be hard to install to decorated surfaces. Motion and sound detectors may also have to be turned off during the day as crowds walk through a museum.

The timing of the robbery, which occurred between 9.30am and 9.40am in Paris, was common of modern robberies, Stürmann said. “It's logical 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 full of visitors who effectively act as additional security staff.”

Technological progress may have thrown up new devices that can raise the alarm more rapidly and effectively, but it has also given robbers new tools with which to bypass protections. In Paris, the thieves accessed the museum’s first-floor window with a vehicle-mounted ladder and cut through a glass pane with a battery-powered disc cutter.

Elaine Sciolino said the conversation in the country about the 232-year-old building had mostly focused on crowd control in recent years, and not as much on security.

The museum has an in-house brigade of about 50 full-time emergency personnel, but their mission is mostly to safeguard the collection from fires and water damage. “There is no quick reaction team,” Sciolino said. “Ultimately, the safety of the Louvre all comes down to government support and funding, and currently the nation lacks sufficient money.”