Louvre Robbery Puts Spotlight on Protection Concerns

Entering the world’s most-visited museum in the middle of the day, grabbing eight items of invaluable historical gems and vanishing into the city traffic on humble scooters may seem like the most audacious of crimes, executed for international notoriety and ensuing movie adaptations.

Specialists who observe patterns in international art crime, however, see Sunday morning’s robbery at the Louvre as a more practical matter: the most recent in a series of quick-hit thefts centered more on the material value of valuable gems or metals than the artifacts’ significance, continuing a pattern that has appeared over the last ten years in Germany, Britain and the US. The venue, they suggest, would have been of secondary concern to the thieves.

“You may ask why thieves 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 nowadays a high-end boutique is more secure.”

A spate of aggressive retail store thefts mean that many outlets have beefed up their protection in the past few years, with security personnel on their locations and merchandise no longer kept on display overnight. Museums, meanwhile, look more exposed, partly because of the inherent reason of being public-facing institutions in historic buildings, and also the current economic climate in many western countries.

“After the pandemic, authorities across the world have cut back on law enforcement and the arts funding,” noted Marinello. “With criminals entering the Louvre, it demonstrates how vulnerable our institutions have become. This is a difficult time to be a museum.”

The robbery of the objects – including jewelry pieces made up of eight sapphires and 631 diamonds, the tiara of Empress Eugénie featuring thousands of diamonds and a hugely valuable crown once possessed by Napoleon III’s wife that the thieves dropped by the roadside on their way out – has naturally drawn comparisons with the 1911 theft of the Mona Lisa from the same museum, performed by the Italian handyman Vincenzo Peruggia.

More relevant points of reference may be the 2019 theft of valuables from Dresden’s Green Vault Museum worth over millions, the theft of a £4.75m gold toilet from a UK landmark the same year, the recent robbery of a large gold coin from Berlin’s Bode Museum or even a series of robberies of sports memorabilia from US mining museums.

“There’s a simple pattern here,” said Marinello. “Smash, grab, and melt it down 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 licit market”, commented Lynda Albertson 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 pieces. Even a individual buyer or an auction house would want to see documentation confirming legal possession before handling such striking pieces.”

In the past, institutions were often hesitant to go public about the loss of well-known works of art and would stay silent out of embarrassment. Now, as cultural robberies are more reported on, the keeping and selling of stolen art is dangerous for any lawbreaker.

“Taking a famous painting, it has to stay complete or it becomes valueless, and you have to conceive of a plan to keep it in hiding, perhaps by passing it around dangerous individuals,” noted Marinello. “There's ongoing risk to the danger of an accomplice informing authorities to collect a ransom.”

For similar reasons, an investigator said it was highly improbable that the robbery had been commissioned. “Stolen to order is something from films,” 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 get caught, you end up in prison. You can't display it to your acquaintances, you cannot bequeath it to your family.”

Altering taken items by melting down or re-cutting does lower the worth. When it comes to gems, it also comes with considerable risk 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 coverup.

Importantly, however, melting down or reshaping eliminates the proof of the theft. “I suspect that the robbers will try to take the items to locations with diamond expertise like a country, another nation or even as close as a city, and find someone to remove the stones,” suggested Marinello.

The heist at the Louvre has already raised questions about protective steps at the institution, with a leaked state auditor report expected to be released soon pointing out “considerable” and “persistent” delays in updating equipment and noting that security cameras were lacking in multiple areas. But specialists say showing valuable objects in historic buildings with a constant flow of visitors comes with dangers that are not possible to eliminate completely.

“Historic buildings are much harder to protect,” said an art crime professor. “Many of them have large accessible windows that makes it easy for criminals to escape, and there may be preservation laws in place that mean you can’t fit them with proper bulletproof glass.”

The best security systems for structures should be designed “like a fortress”, said a security advisor. “There should be several layers to deter intruders.”

Modern buildings are equipped with advanced external CCTV cameras or in-built seismic detectors that raise alarm about a smashed window in immediately, but historic institutions may be reluctant to uglify their exteriors. Laser scanners can be hard to fit to decorated surfaces. Motion and sound detectors may also have to be turned off during the day as hordes of visitors walk through a museum.

The schedule of the robbery, which took place between 9.30am and 9.40am in Paris, was common of recent thefts, Stürmann said. “It's logical why thefts tend to happen at either start or end of day. Frequently when guards rotate and before the museum is full of visitors who effectively act as additional security staff.”

Advances in technology may have thrown up new gadgets that can notify more rapidly and effectively, but it has also given robbers new tools with which to circumvent protections. In Paris, the robbers accessed the museum’s upper level with a vehicle-mounted ladder and breached a glass pane with a electric tool.

An author said the discussion in France about the historic building had mostly focused on crowd control in the past decade, and not as much on protection.

The museum has an in-house brigade of about 50 permanent firefighters, but their purpose is mainly to protect the collection from blazes and flooding. “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.”