Louvre Heist Shines Spotlight on Security Issues

Breaking into the world’s most-visited museum 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 international notoriety and ensuing Hollywood film treatments.

Experts who study patterns in international art crime, however, see Sunday morning’s robbery at the Louvre as a more practical matter: the latest in a string of smash-and-grab thefts focused more on the material value of precious stones or metals than the artifacts’ significance, continuing a trend that has appeared over the last ten years in Europe, the UK and the US. The venue, they propose, would have been of secondary concern to the criminals.

“One might wonder why thieves who want to take expensive jewellery are breaking into a world-famous museum rather than a Cartier store,” said Christopher A Marinello. “It's straightforward: it’s because nowadays a high-end boutique is better protected.”

A spate of aggressive jewellery shop thefts mean that many stores have strengthened their security in the past few years, with security personnel on their locations and merchandise no longer shown overnight. Cultural institutions, on the other hand, look more exposed, partly because of the inherent factor of being accessible institutions in older structures, and also the current economic climate in many western countries.

“Since Covid, authorities across the world have cut back on law enforcement and the culture sector,” said Marinello. “With criminals entering 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 – featuring necklaces made up of precious stones and 631 diamonds, the tiara of Empress Eugénie featuring nearly 2,000 diamonds and a extremely expensive diadem once possessed 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 worker Vincenzo Peruggia.

Better comparisons may be the 2019 burglary of valuables from a German institution worth over millions, the theft of a £4.75m gold toilet from Blenheim Palace the same year, the 2017 robbery of a large gold coin from a European museum or even a spate of thefts of sports memorabilia from US mining museums.

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

If the artefacts were to remain intact, experts say, the criminals would struggle to sell them. “There’s no way to sell something as immediately identifiable as the Louvre’s jewels on the legal marketplace”, 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 auction house would want to see paperwork confirming legal possession before handling such remarkable pieces.”

In the past, museums were often reluctant to announce publicly about the disappearance of famous art pieces and would stay silent out of shame. These days, as art thefts are more reported on, the keeping and sale of stolen art is risky business for any criminal.

“If you steal a famous painting, 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 reward.”

For similar reasons, an art detective said it was highly improbable that the theft had been commissioned. “Stolen to order is something from Hollywood movies,” he said. “No one would handle these items. It’s all around the world and in all the newspapers. If you buy this, if you are apprehended, you go to jail. You cannot show it to your acquaintances, you cannot bequeath it to your children.”

Modifying taken items by melting down or reshaping does reduce the value. When it comes to gems, it also comes with significant danger because contemporary cutting techniques give stones a bigger and lighter appearance, and older-style stones would either attract notice or barter the price down for a concealment.

Crucially, however, melting down or reshaping removes the evidence of the crime. “My guess is that the robbers will try to take the stolen goods to locations with gem knowledge like a country, 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 institution, with a leaked state auditor report expected to be published soon criticising “significant” and “ongoing” slow progress in updating equipment and observing that security cameras were lacking in multiple areas. But specialists say showing valuable objects in historic buildings with a constant flow of guests comes with dangers that are not possible to remove entirely.

“Historic buildings are much harder to secure,” explained an art crime professor. “They often have nice big street-facing windows that allows for thieves to escape, and there may be building protection statutes in place that mean you are unable to install them with proper bulletproof glass.”

The best protective measures for structures should be conceptualised “like a fortress”, said Peter Stürmann. “There should be several layers to repel intruders.”

Contemporary structures are fitted with state-of-the-art external CCTV cameras or in-built vibration sensors that alert about a broken glass in immediately, but old museums may be hesitant to uglify their appearance. Detection devices can be hard to fit to stuccoed ceilings. 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 took place between 9.30am and 9.40am local time, was common of modern robberies, Stürmann said. “There’s a good reason why robberies tend to happen at either opening or closing times. It’s often when guards change their shifts and prior to the museum is full of visitors who effectively act as extra protection.”

Advances in technology may have introduced new devices that can notify more quickly and effectively, but it has also provided thieves new tools with which to bypass security measures. In the city, the robbers reached the museum’s upper level with a mobile equipment and cut through a window with a battery-powered disc cutter.

Elaine Sciolino said the discussion in France about the historic building had primarily focused on visitor management in recent years, and less on security.

The institution has an on-site team of about 50 permanent firefighters, but their mission is mainly to safeguard the collection from fires and flooding. “There isn't a quick reaction team,” Sciolino said. “In the end, the safety of the Louvre all depends on government support and money, and currently the nation lacks sufficient resources.”