🔗 Share this article

Breaking into the planet's most popular art institution in the middle of the day, grabbing eight pieces of priceless historical gems and disappearing into the city traffic on humble scooters may seem like the boldest of crimes, executed for international notoriety and ensuing movie adaptations.

Experts who study trends in international art crime, however, see Sunday morning’s robbery at the Louvre as a more practical matter: the latest 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 pattern that has appeared over the last decade in Europe, Britain and the US. The venue, they propose, would have been of lesser importance to the thieves.

“One might wonder why criminals who want to take valuable jewellery are entering a globally renowned museum rather than a luxury jewelry store,” said an expert in art recovery. “It's straightforward: it’s because nowadays a high-end boutique is more secure.”

A series of aggressive retail store 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. Museums, meanwhile, look vulnerable, in part because of the in-built reason of being accessible institutions in historic buildings, and partly the current economic climate in many developed nations.

“Since Covid, governments across the globe have reduced spending on law enforcement and the culture sector,” noted Marinello. “If thieves can get into the Louvre, it shows how at risk our institutions have become. This is a horrible time to be a museum.”

The robbery of the items – including jewelry pieces made up of precious stones and 631 diamonds, the crown of Empress Eugénie featuring thousands of diamonds and a extremely expensive diadem once possessed by Napoleon III’s wife that the thieves dropped by the street on their way out – has naturally been compared with the historical theft of the Mona Lisa from the same museum, performed by the worker Vincenzo Peruggia.

More relevant comparisons may be the recent burglary of jewellery from Dresden’s Green Vault Museum worth over €113m, the theft of a multi-million pound gold toilet from a UK landmark the same year, the 2017 robbery of a valuable item from a European museum or even a spate of robberies of collector items from American institutions.

“There’s a simple pattern here,” said Marinello. “Smash, grab, and melt it down as rapidly as possible.”

If the artefacts were to stay whole, experts say, the criminals would struggle to sell them. “There’s no way to sell something as immediately identifiable as the museum's gems on the licit market”, said an art crime researcher of the a relevant organization.

“They would be immediately recognised, particularly given the Ministry of Culture has published photos of the items. Even a individual buyer or an auction house would want to see documentation confirming proper ownership before touching such remarkable pieces.”

In the past, museums were often hesitant to announce publicly about the disappearance of famous art pieces and would remain quiet out of embarrassment. Now, as cultural robberies are more widely publicised, the keeping and selling of taken items is dangerous for any lawbreaker.

“If you steal a famous painting, it has to remain intact or it becomes valueless, and you have to devise a scheme to conceal it, maybe by passing it around dangerous individuals,” noted Marinello. “And you’re constantly exposed to the risk of an accomplice telling the police to collect a ransom.”

For similar reasons, an art detective said it was vanishingly unlikely that the theft had been ordered. “Commissioned theft is something from films,” he said. “Nobody would touch this. It’s all around the world and in all the media. If you buy this, if you get caught, you go to jail. You can't display it to your acquaintances, you cannot bequeath it to your family.”

Modifying taken items by melting down or reshaping does lower the value. When it comes to gems, it also comes with considerable risk because contemporary methods give gems a larger and lighter surface area, and antique-cut stones would either draw unwanted attention or barter the price down for a coverup.

Importantly, however, dismantling or re-cutting eliminates the proof of the crime. “I suspect that the robbers will try to take the stolen goods to places with diamond expertise like a country, another nation or even as nearby as Antwerp, and locate an expert to cut out the gems,” suggested 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 “persistent” slow progress in updating equipment and noting that surveillance were lacking in many rooms. But security experts say showing valuable objects in older structures with a constant flow of visitors comes with risks that are not possible to eliminate completely.

“Historic buildings are much harder to protect,” explained an art crime professor. “Many of them have large accessible windows that makes it easy for thieves to get away, and there may be preservation laws in place that mean you are unable to install them with proper bulletproof glass.”

The best protective measures for buildings should be designed “like a fortress”, noted a security advisor. “It should include several layers to repel intruders.”

Modern buildings are fitted with advanced surveillance systems or integrated vibration sensors that alert about a smashed window in immediately, but old museums may be reluctant to alter their exteriors. Detection devices can be difficult to fit to stuccoed ceilings. Sensors may also have to be turned off during the daytime as hordes of visitors stomp through a museum.

The timing of the robbery, which occurred between morning hours in Paris, was common of recent thefts, Stürmann said. “There’s a good reason why robberies tend to happen at either start or end of day. It’s often when guards change their shifts and prior to the museum is crowded who effectively act as extra protection.”

Advances in technology may have introduced new devices that can notify more rapidly and effectively, but it has also provided thieves new tools with which to circumvent security measures. In Paris, the thieves reached the museum’s upper level with a vehicle-mounted ladder and cut through a glass pane with a electric tool.

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

The museum has an on-site team of about 50 full-time firefighters, but their mission is mainly to safeguard the collection from fires and flooding. “There is no quick reaction team,” Sciolino said. “Ultimately, the safety of the Louvre all comes down to political will and money, and currently the nation lacks sufficient resources.”