Louvre Heist Puts Focus on Protection Issues

Breaking into the world’s most-visited art institution in broad daylight, taking eight items of invaluable Napoleonic jewellery and disappearing into the city traffic on humble scooters may seem like the most audacious of crimes, executed for international notoriety and subsequent Hollywood film treatments.

Specialists who observe trends in global cultural theft, however, see Sunday morning’s robbery at the Louvre as something more prosaic: the latest in a series of quick-hit thefts centered more on the monetary worth of precious stones or materials than the historical importance, perpetuating a pattern that has appeared over the last ten years in Germany, Britain and the US. The location, they suggest, would have been of lesser importance to the criminals.

“One might wonder why thieves who want to take expensive jewellery are entering a world-famous museum rather than a luxury jewelry store,” stated an expert in art recovery. “It's straightforward: it’s because these days a high-end boutique is more secure.”

A spate of aggressive retail store thefts indicate that many stores have beefed up their security in recent years, with armed guards on their premises and merchandise no longer shown overnight. Cultural institutions, meanwhile, look more exposed, partly because of the inherent factor of being public-facing institutions in older structures, and also the financial situation in many developed nations.

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

The theft of the items – featuring jewelry pieces made up of eight sapphires and 631 diamonds, the tiara of Empress Eugénie featuring thousands of diamonds and a hugely valuable diadem once owned by Napoleon III’s wife that the robbers left by the street on their way out – has naturally been compared with the 1911 theft of the Mona Lisa from the same museum, performed by the Italian handyman the thief.

More relevant comparisons may be the 2019 burglary of jewellery from Dresden’s Green Vault Museum worth over €113m, the taking of a £4.75m valuable object from Blenheim Palace the same year, the 2017 heist of a valuable item from Berlin’s Bode Museum or even a series of thefts of collector items from US mining museums.

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

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

“They would be immediately recognised, especially given the cultural authorities has published photos of the pieces. Even a individual buyer or an auction house would want to see documentation establishing proper ownership before touching such striking pieces.”

In the previous years, institutions were often reluctant to announce publicly about the disappearance of famous works of art and would remain quiet out of embarrassment. Now, as art thefts are more reported on, the storage and selling of stolen art is dangerous for any criminal.

“Taking a Picasso, it has to stay complete or it becomes valueless, and you have to devise a scheme to keep it in hiding, perhaps by passing it around difficult criminal actors,” said Marinello. “And you’re constantly exposed to the danger of an accomplice telling the police to cash in a ransom.”

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 all around the world and in all the media. If you acquire these, if you get caught, you end up in prison. You can't display it to your acquaintances, you cannot bequeath it to your children.”

Altering stolen works by melting down or re-cutting does lower the value. When it comes to diamonds, it also comes with significant danger because modern methods give gems a bigger and brighter appearance, and antique-cut stones would either attract notice or barter the price down for a concealment.

Importantly, however, melting down or re-cutting removes the proof of the theft. “My guess is that the robbers will try to take the stolen goods to places with diamond expertise like Israel, another nation or even as nearby as Antwerp, and find someone to cut out the stones,” 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 pointing out “significant” and “ongoing” slow progress in modernizing systems and noting that security cameras were missing in many rooms. But specialists say showing valuable objects in historic buildings with a steady stream of visitors comes with risks that are not possible to eliminate completely.

“Older structures are more difficult to protect,” 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 proper bulletproof glass.”

The best security systems for buildings should be conceptualised “like a fortress”, noted Peter Stürmann. “It should include several layers to deter intruders.”

Contemporary structures are equipped with advanced external CCTV cameras or integrated vibration sensors that raise alarm about a broken glass in immediately, but old museums may be reluctant to uglify their appearance. Laser scanners 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 walk through a museum.

The schedule of the Louvre raid, which took place between 9.30am and 9.40am local time, was typical of recent thefts, Stürmann said. “It's logical why robberies tend to happen at either start or end of day. It’s often when guards change their shifts and before the museum is crowded who actually act as extra protection.”

Technological progress may have introduced new gadgets that can raise the alarm more rapidly and effectively, but it has also provided robbers new tools with which to circumvent protections. In Paris, the robbers reached the museum’s first-floor window with a vehicle-mounted ladder and cut through a window with a electric tool.

An author said the discussion in France about the 232-year-old structure had mostly centered on crowd control in the past decade, and less on protection.

The museum has an in-house team of about 50 full-time emergency personnel, but their mission is mainly to protect the artworks from blazes and water damage. “There isn't a quick reaction team,” Sciolino said. “Ultimately, the safety of the Louvre all depends on political will and funding, and currently France simply has no resources.”