🔗 Share this article

Entering the world’s most-visited museum in broad daylight, taking eight pieces of priceless historical gems and disappearing into the city traffic on humble scooters may seem like the most audacious of crimes, carried out for international notoriety and ensuing movie adaptations.

Experts who study patterns in international art crime, however, see Sunday morning’s heist at the Louvre as a more practical matter: the most recent in a series of smash-and-grab thefts focused more on the monetary worth of valuable gems or materials than the artifacts’ significance, continuing a trend that has appeared over the last decade in Germany, the UK 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 globally renowned museum rather than a luxury jewelry store,” stated Christopher A Marinello. “The answer is simple: it’s because these days a high-end boutique is more secure.”

A spate of aggressive jewellery shop thefts mean that many outlets have beefed up their security in the past few years, with armed guards on their locations and wares no longer shown overnight. Cultural institutions, meanwhile, look vulnerable, in part because of the inherent reason of being accessible institutions in historic buildings, and also the financial situation in many western countries.

“Since Covid, authorities across the world have reduced spending on law enforcement and the arts funding,” noted Marinello. “With criminals entering the Louvre, it shows how vulnerable our museums have become. This is a horrible time to be a museum.”

The theft of the items – including necklaces made up of precious stones and hundreds of gems, the crown of a historical figure containing nearly 2,000 diamonds and a extremely expensive crown once possessed by Napoleon III’s wife that the thieves dropped by the street on their way out – has inevitably been compared with the 1911 theft of the Mona Lisa from the same museum, performed by the worker the thief.

Better points of reference may be the recent theft of jewellery from a German institution worth over €113m, the theft of a multi-million pound valuable object from a UK landmark the that year, the recent robbery of a valuable item from a European museum or even a spate of robberies of sports memorabilia from American institutions.

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

If the items were to remain intact, specialists say, the criminals would find it hard to sell them. “It's impossible to sell something as recognizable as the museum's gems on the licit market”, commented an art crime researcher of the Association for Research into Crimes against Art.

“They would be immediately recognised, especially given the Ministry of Culture 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 previous years, institutions were often reluctant to announce publicly about the loss of famous art pieces and would stay silent out of embarrassment. Now, as art thefts are more widely publicised, the storage and selling of taken items is dangerous for any lawbreaker.

“Taking a famous painting, it has to stay complete or it becomes worthless, and you have to conceive of a scheme to keep it in hiding, maybe by moving it among dangerous individuals,” noted Marinello. “And you’re constantly exposed to the risk of an accomplice informing authorities to cash in a ransom.”

For similar reasons, an investigator said it was highly improbable that the theft had been commissioned. “Commissioned theft 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 go to jail. You cannot show it to your acquaintances, you cannot leave it to your family.”

Modifying stolen works by melting down or re-cutting does reduce the value. When it comes to gems, it also comes with significant danger because contemporary methods give stones a larger and lighter surface area, and antique-cut stones would either draw unwanted attention or barter the price down for a concealment.

Crucially, however, melting down or reshaping eliminates the evidence of the theft. “I suspect that the Louvre thieves will try to bring the stolen goods to places with gem knowledge like Israel, India or even as close as a city, and find someone to cut out the gems,” suggested Marinello.

The heist at the Louvre has already brought up concerns about protective steps at the museum, with a leaked state auditor report expected to be published next month criticising “considerable” and “persistent” delays in updating systems and noting that security cameras were missing in many rooms. But specialists say displaying valuable objects in historic buildings with a steady stream of guests comes with dangers that are impossible to remove entirely.

“Historic buildings are more difficult to protect,” said an art crime professor. “They often have nice big street-facing windows that makes it easy for criminals 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 buildings should be conceptualised “as a stronghold”, noted Peter Stürmann. “It should include several layers to deter intruders.”

Modern buildings are equipped with advanced surveillance systems or integrated vibration sensors that alert about a broken glass in real time, but old museums may be hesitant to uglify their exteriors. Detection devices can be hard to install to stuccoed ceilings. Sensors may also have to be disabled during the day as crowds stomp through a museum.

The schedule of the Louvre raid, which occurred between morning hours in Paris, was common 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 rotate and before the museum is crowded who effectively act as additional security staff.”

Technological progress may have introduced new devices that can notify more rapidly and efficiently, but it has also provided thieves new methods with which to bypass security measures. In Paris, the thieves reached the museum’s first-floor window with a mobile equipment and breached a glass pane with a electric tool.

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

The museum has an on-site brigade of about 50 permanent firefighters, but their purpose is mainly to protect the artworks from fires and water damage. “There is no quick reaction team,” Sciolino said. “Ultimately, the safety of the Louvre all depends on political will and money, and currently the nation lacks sufficient resources.”