🔗 Share this article

Entering the world’s most-visited museum in broad daylight, taking eight pieces of priceless Napoleonic jewellery and vanishing into Paris traffic on humble scooters may seem like the most audacious of crimes, executed for international notoriety and ensuing Hollywood film treatments.

Specialists who study patterns in global cultural theft, however, see Sunday morning’s robbery at the Louvre as something more prosaic: the most recent in a series of quick-hit thefts focused more on the monetary worth of valuable gems or metals than the artifacts’ significance, continuing a trend that has emerged over the last ten years in Europe, Britain and the US. The venue, they suggest, would have been of lesser importance to the thieves.

“One might wonder why thieves who want to steal valuable jewellery are breaking into a globally renowned museum rather than a luxury jewelry store,” said an expert in art recovery. “It's straightforward: it’s because nowadays a Cartier store is better protected.”

A spate of violent retail store thefts mean that many stores have strengthened their security in recent years, with security personnel on their premises and merchandise no longer kept on display overnight. Cultural institutions, on the other hand, look vulnerable, in part because of the inherent factor of being accessible institutions in older structures, and also the current economic climate in many developed nations.

“Since Covid, authorities across the world have cut back on police and the arts funding,” said Marinello. “With criminals entering the Louvre, it demonstrates how at risk our museums have become. This is a difficult time to be a museum.”

The robbery of the items – featuring jewelry pieces made up of precious stones and 631 diamonds, the crown of a historical figure featuring thousands of diamonds and a hugely valuable crown once possessed by a royal that the thieves left by the street on their way out – has naturally drawn comparisons with the 1911 theft of the famous painting from the Louvre, carried out by the Italian handyman Vincenzo Peruggia.

Better comparisons may be the 2019 burglary of jewellery from Dresden’s Green Vault Museum worth over €113m, the theft of a multi-million pound gold toilet from a UK landmark the same year, the recent robbery of a valuable item from a European museum or even a series of robberies of sports memorabilia from US mining museums.

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

If the artefacts were to stay whole, experts say, the criminals would struggle to sell them. “There’s no way to trade something as recognizable as the museum's gems on the licit market”, said an art crime researcher of the a relevant organization.

“They are too well-known, especially given the Ministry of Culture has published photos of the pieces. Even a private collector or an auction house would want to see documentation confirming legal possession before touching such striking pieces.”

In the previous years, museums were often hesitant to go public about the disappearance of famous works of art and would remain quiet out of embarrassment. These days, as art thefts are more widely publicised, the storage and selling of taken items is dangerous for any lawbreaker.

“Taking a Picasso, it has to stay complete or it becomes worthless, and you have to devise a plan to conceal it, perhaps by passing it around difficult criminal actors,” said Marinello. “And you’re constantly exposed to the risk of an partner informing authorities to cash in a ransom.”

For similar reasons, an art detective said it was highly improbable that the theft had been commissioned. “Stolen to order is something from films,” he said. “Nobody would touch this. It's global news and in all the media. If you acquire these, if you are apprehended, you end up in prison. You can't display it to your friends, you cannot leave it to your children.”

Modifying stolen works by melting down or re-cutting does reduce the value. When it comes to diamonds, it also comes with significant danger because modern methods give stones a larger and lighter surface area, and older-style stones would either attract notice or barter the price down for a concealment.

Importantly, however, dismantling or reshaping eliminates the evidence of the crime. “My guess is that the Louvre thieves will try to take the stolen goods to places with diamond expertise like Israel, India or even as close as Antwerp, and locate an expert to cut out the stones,” said Marinello.

The robbery at the Louvre has already raised questions about security measures at the museum, with a unauthorized official review expected to be published next month criticising “significant” and “persistent” delays in modernizing systems and noting that surveillance were missing in multiple areas. But specialists say showing precious items in older structures with a steady stream of visitors comes with risks that are impossible to remove entirely.

“Historic buildings are much harder to secure,” said an art crime professor. “Many of them have large accessible windows that allows for criminals to escape, and there may be preservation laws in place that mean you are unable to install them with secure windows.”

The best security systems for buildings should be designed “like a fortress”, noted Peter Stürmann. “There should be several layers to repel intruders.”

Modern buildings are equipped with state-of-the-art surveillance systems or in-built seismic detectors that alert about a smashed window in immediately, but historic institutions may be hesitant to uglify their appearance. Detection devices can be hard to install to stuccoed ceilings. Sensors may also have to be turned off during the day as hordes of visitors walk through a museum.

The schedule of the robbery, which occurred between morning hours in Paris, was common 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 additional security staff.”

Technological progress may have thrown up new devices that can raise the alarm more quickly and efficiently, but it has also given robbers new methods with which to circumvent security measures. In Paris, the thieves accessed the museum’s upper level with a mobile equipment and breached a glass pane with a battery-powered disc cutter.

An author said the conversation in France about the historic building had primarily focused on visitor management in recent years, and less on security.

The institution has an in-house team of about 50 permanent emergency personnel, but their purpose is mostly to safeguard the artworks from blazes and flooding. “There is no quick reaction team,” Sciolino said. “In the end, the safety of the Louvre all depends on government support and money, and at present France lacks sufficient resources.”