Paris Museum Heist Shines Focus on Security Issues

Entering the world’s most-visited art institution in the middle of the day, taking eight items of invaluable historical gems and disappearing into Paris traffic on simple scooters may seem like the most audacious of crimes, carried out for international notoriety and subsequent movie adaptations.

Specialists who observe patterns in global cultural theft, however, see the recent robbery at the Louvre as a more practical matter: the latest in a series of smash-and-grab thefts focused more on the monetary worth of precious stones or metals than the historical importance, continuing a pattern that has emerged over the last ten years in Europe, Britain and the US. The location, they propose, would have been of lesser importance to the thieves.

“One might wonder why criminals who want to steal valuable jewellery are breaking into a globally renowned museum rather than a luxury jewelry store,” stated Christopher A Marinello. “It's straightforward: it’s because nowadays a high-end boutique is better protected.”

A series of aggressive jewellery shop thefts mean that many outlets have beefed up their security in the past few years, with security personnel on their locations and wares no longer shown overnight. Cultural institutions, meanwhile, look more exposed, partly because of the in-built reason of being accessible institutions in older structures, and also the financial situation in many western countries.

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

The theft of the items – including necklaces made up of precious stones and 631 diamonds, the crown of Empress Eugénie containing nearly 2,000 diamonds and a hugely valuable crown once owned by a royal that the thieves left by the street on their way out – has naturally drawn comparisons with the historical theft of the famous painting from the Louvre, carried out by the Italian handyman Vincenzo Peruggia.

Better points of reference may be the recent burglary of valuables from Dresden’s Green Vault Museum worth over millions, the theft of a multi-million pound gold toilet from Blenheim Palace the same year, the recent robbery of a large gold coin from a European museum or even a spate of thefts of sports memorabilia from American institutions.

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

If the items were to stay whole, specialists say, the thieves would struggle to find a buyer. “There’s no way to sell something as immediately identifiable as the Louvre’s jewels on the legal marketplace”, commented an art crime researcher of the Association for Research into Crimes against Art.

“They would be immediately recognised, especially given the Ministry of Culture has released images of the items. Even a private collector or an auction house would want to see paperwork establishing proper ownership before touching such remarkable pieces.”

In the past, institutions were often reluctant to go public about the disappearance of famous art pieces and would stay silent out of embarrassment. These days, as cultural robberies are more reported on, the storage and sale of taken items is risky business for any criminal.

“If you steal a Picasso, it has to stay complete or it becomes valueless, and you have to conceive of a scheme to keep it in hiding, perhaps by moving it among difficult criminal actors,” said Marinello. “There's ongoing risk to the risk of an partner telling the police to cash in a reward.”

For similar reasons, an investigator said it was vanishingly unlikely that the robbery had been ordered. “Stolen to order is something from films,” he said. “Nobody would touch this. It’s all around the world and in all the newspapers. If you buy this, if you are apprehended, you go to jail. You can't display it to your friends, you cannot bequeath it to your family.”

Modifying stolen works by dismantling or reshaping does lower the value. When it comes to diamonds, it also comes with significant danger because contemporary cutting techniques give gems a bigger and brighter appearance, and antique-cut stones would either draw unwanted attention or barter the price down for a concealment.

Crucially, however, melting down or re-cutting eliminates the proof of the crime. “My guess is that the robbers will try to take the stolen goods to locations with diamond expertise like a country, India or even as close as a city, and find someone to cut out the gems,” said Marinello.

The robbery at the Louvre has already raised questions about protective steps at the museum, with a leaked official review expected to be released next month criticising “significant” and “ongoing” slow progress in updating equipment and observing that surveillance were lacking in multiple areas. But security experts say displaying precious items in older structures with a steady stream of guests comes with dangers that are not possible to remove entirely.

“Historic buildings are more difficult to secure,” explained Erin Thompson. “Many of them have large accessible windows that allows for thieves to get away, and there may be preservation laws in place that mean you can’t fit them with proper bulletproof glass.”

The most solid protective measures for buildings should be conceptualised “as a stronghold”, noted a security advisor. “There should be several layers to repel intruders.”

Modern buildings are equipped with state-of-the-art external CCTV cameras or integrated vibration sensors that raise alarm about a smashed window in real time, but old museums may be reluctant to uglify their appearance. Detection devices can be difficult to install to decorated surfaces. Motion and sound detectors may also have to be disabled during the day as hordes of visitors stomp through a museum.

The timing of the Louvre raid, which occurred between morning hours local time, was common 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 prior to the museum is crowded who effectively act as extra protection.”

Advances in technology may have introduced new gadgets that can raise the alarm more rapidly and effectively, but it has also given robbers new tools with which to bypass protections. In the city, the thieves reached the museum’s first-floor window with a vehicle-mounted ladder and breached a glass pane with a battery-powered disc cutter.

Elaine Sciolino said the discussion in France about the historic building had mostly centered on crowd control in the past decade, and less on protection.

The museum has an in-house brigade of about fifty permanent firefighters, but their mission is mostly to safeguard the artworks from blazes and water damage. “There is no quick reaction team,” Sciolino said. “In the end, the security of the Louvre all depends on political will and money, and at present France lacks sufficient money.”