🔗 Share this article

Breaking into the world’s most-visited museum in the middle of the day, taking eight items of invaluable Napoleonic jewellery and disappearing into Paris traffic on humble scooters may seem like the most audacious of crimes, carried out for global fame and subsequent movie adaptations.

Specialists who study patterns in global cultural theft, however, see the recent robbery at the Louvre as a more practical matter: the latest in a series of quick-hit thefts focused more on the monetary worth of valuable gems or metals than the historical importance, perpetuating a trend that has appeared over the last decade in Germany, Britain and the US. The venue, they suggest, would have been of secondary concern to the thieves.

“One might wonder why criminals who want to take expensive jewellery are breaking into a world-famous museum rather than a Cartier store,” stated Christopher A Marinello. “The answer is simple: it’s because these days a Cartier store is better protected.”

A series of aggressive jewellery shop thefts mean that many stores have strengthened their security in recent years, with security personnel on their locations and wares no longer shown overnight. Museums, meanwhile, look more exposed, partly because of the in-built factor of being accessible institutions in older structures, and also the financial situation in many western countries.

“Since Covid, governments across the world have cut back on police and the culture sector,” noted Marinello. “With criminals entering the Louvre, it demonstrates how at risk our institutions have become. This is a horrible time to be a museum.”

The theft of the items – featuring necklaces made up of eight sapphires and hundreds of gems, the tiara of Empress Eugénie containing thousands of diamonds and a extremely expensive crown once owned by Napoleon III’s wife that the thieves dropped by the roadside on their way out – has inevitably drawn comparisons with the historical theft of the Mona Lisa from the Louvre, carried out by the Italian handyman the thief.

Better points of reference may be the 2019 burglary of jewellery from a German institution worth over millions, the theft of a multi-million pound valuable object from a UK landmark the that year, the recent heist of a large gold coin from Berlin’s Bode Museum or even a spate of robberies of sports memorabilia from American institutions.

“It's a clear trend here,” said Marinello. “Smash, grab, and melt it down as quickly as possible.”

If the items were to remain intact, specialists say, the criminals would struggle to sell them. “It's impossible to trade something as immediately identifiable as the museum's gems on the legal marketplace”, said Lynda Albertson of the a relevant organization.

“They are too well-known, particularly given the Ministry of Culture has released images of the items. Even a private collector or an auction house would want to see documentation confirming proper ownership before handling such remarkable pieces.”

In the previous years, institutions were often hesitant to announce publicly about the disappearance of famous art pieces and would stay silent out of shame. Now, as art thefts are more reported on, the storage and sale of stolen art is dangerous for any lawbreaker.

“If you steal a famous painting, it has to stay complete or it becomes worthless, and you have to conceive of a plan to conceal it, maybe by passing it around difficult criminal actors,” noted Marinello. “There's ongoing risk to the danger of an partner telling the police to collect a ransom.”

For similar reasons, an investigator said it was highly improbable that the robbery had been commissioned. “Commissioned theft is something from Hollywood movies,” he said. “Nobody would touch this. It's global news and in all the newspapers. If you acquire these, if you get caught, you go to jail. You can't display it to your acquaintances, you cannot bequeath it to your family.”

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

Importantly, however, melting down or re-cutting eliminates the evidence of the crime. “My guess is that the robbers will try to bring the stolen goods to places with diamond expertise like a country, India or even as close as Antwerp, and locate an expert to cut out the gems,” said Marinello.

The heist at the Louvre has already raised questions about protective steps at the institution, with a unauthorized state auditor report expected to be published next month criticising “considerable” and “persistent” slow progress in modernizing systems and observing that security cameras were missing in multiple areas. But security experts say displaying valuable objects in historic buildings with a steady stream of visitors comes with risks that are not possible to eliminate completely.

“Historic buildings are much harder to secure,” said Erin Thompson. “They often have large accessible windows that allows for criminals to escape, and there may be preservation laws in place that mean you can’t fit them with secure windows.”

The best security systems for structures should be designed “like a fortress”, noted Peter Stürmann. “It should include multiple levels to deter attackers.”

Contemporary structures are fitted with state-of-the-art external CCTV cameras or integrated vibration sensors that raise alarm about a broken glass in real time, but historic institutions may be reluctant to alter their appearance. Laser scanners can be hard to fit to stuccoed ceilings. Motion and sound detectors may also have to be disabled during the daytime as hordes of visitors walk through a museum.

The schedule of the Louvre raid, which occurred between 9.30am and 9.40am in Paris, was typical 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 rotate and prior to the museum is crowded who effectively 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 provided thieves new tools with which to bypass security measures. In Paris, the robbers accessed the museum’s first-floor window with a mobile equipment and cut through a glass pane with a battery-powered disc cutter.

An author said the conversation in the country about the 232-year-old structure had primarily centered on visitor management in the past decade, and not as much on security.

The museum has an in-house team of about 50 permanent emergency personnel, but their purpose is mainly to safeguard the artworks from blazes and flooding. “There is no rapid-response unit,” Sciolino said. “In the end, the security of the Louvre all depends on political will and money, and at present France simply has no money.”