🔗 Share this article

Breaking into the planet's most popular museum in the middle of the day, grabbing eight pieces of priceless Napoleonic jewellery and vanishing into Paris traffic on humble scooters may seem like the most audacious of crimes, carried out for global fame and ensuing movie adaptations.

Experts who study patterns in global cultural theft, however, see the recent heist at the Louvre as something more prosaic: the most recent in a series of smash-and-grab thefts focused more on the material value of precious stones or materials than the artifacts’ significance, continuing a trend that has emerged over the last decade in Germany, the UK and the US. The venue, they suggest, would have been of lesser importance to the criminals.

“You may ask why criminals who want to take expensive jewellery are breaking into a globally renowned museum rather than a luxury jewelry store,” said Christopher A Marinello. “The answer is simple: it’s because nowadays a Cartier store is more secure.”

A spate of aggressive jewellery shop thefts indicate that many stores have strengthened their protection in recent years, with armed guards on their premises and merchandise no longer kept on display overnight. Museums, on the other hand, look vulnerable, partly because of the inherent reason of being accessible institutions in older structures, and also the current economic climate in many western countries.

“Since Covid, governments across the world have reduced spending on police and the culture sector,” said 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 items – featuring jewelry pieces made up of precious stones and 631 diamonds, the tiara of a historical figure containing thousands of diamonds and a hugely valuable crown once possessed by Napoleon III’s wife that the robbers left by the roadside on their way out – has naturally been compared with the historical theft of the famous painting from the same museum, performed by the Italian handyman the thief.

More relevant comparisons may be the recent theft of jewellery from a German institution worth over millions, the theft of a £4.75m valuable object from a UK landmark the same year, the recent heist of a valuable item from Berlin’s Bode Museum or even a series of thefts of collector items from American institutions.

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

If the artefacts were to remain intact, specialists say, the criminals would struggle to find a buyer. “It's impossible to sell something as immediately identifiable as the museum's gems on the licit market”, said Lynda Albertson of the a relevant organization.

“They are too well-known, particularly given the Ministry of Culture has published photos of the pieces. Even a individual buyer or an sales venue would want to see paperwork confirming proper ownership before touching such striking pieces.”

In the previous years, museums were often hesitant to announce publicly about the disappearance of famous art pieces and would stay silent out of shame. Now, as cultural robberies are more widely publicised, the storage and selling of taken items is risky business for any lawbreaker.

“Taking a Picasso, it has to stay complete or it becomes worthless, and you have to conceive of a scheme to keep it in hiding, maybe by passing it around difficult criminal actors,” said Marinello. “There's ongoing risk to the danger of an accomplice informing authorities to collect a reward.”

For comparable factors, an investigator said it was vanishingly unlikely that the robbery had been commissioned. “Stolen to order is something from films,” he said. “No one would handle these items. It's global news and in all the media. If you buy this, if you are apprehended, you go to jail. You cannot show it to your acquaintances, you cannot leave it to your family.”

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

Importantly, however, dismantling or re-cutting eliminates the evidence of the theft. “My guess is that the robbers will try to take the stolen goods to locations with diamond expertise like a country, India or even as nearby as Antwerp, and find someone to remove the gems,” suggested 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 released soon pointing out “significant” and “ongoing” delays in modernizing systems and observing that surveillance were missing in multiple areas. But security experts say displaying valuable objects in older structures with a steady stream of guests comes with risks that are not possible to eliminate completely.

“Older structures are more difficult to protect,” explained an art crime professor. “They often have nice big street-facing windows that makes it easy for thieves to escape, and there may be building protection statutes in place that mean you can’t fit them with proper bulletproof glass.”

The best security systems for buildings should be conceptualised “like a fortress”, noted a security advisor. “There should be multiple levels to repel attackers.”

Modern buildings are fitted with advanced surveillance systems or integrated vibration sensors that raise alarm about a broken glass in immediately, but old museums may be reluctant to uglify their exteriors. Detection devices can be difficult to install to decorated surfaces. Sensors may also have to be turned off during the day as hordes of visitors stomp through a museum.

The timing of the robbery, which occurred between 9.30am and 9.40am in Paris, was typical of recent thefts, Stürmann said. “There’s a good reason why thefts tend to happen at either start or end of day. It’s often when security rotate and before the museum is crowded who actually act as additional security staff.”

Advances in technology may have thrown up new gadgets that can notify more rapidly and efficiently, but it has also given thieves new tools with which to bypass protections. In the city, the thieves accessed the museum’s upper level with a mobile equipment and cut through a window with a electric tool.

An author said the conversation in the country about the 232-year-old building had primarily centered on crowd control in recent years, and not as much on security.

The museum has an in-house team of about fifty permanent firefighters, but their mission is mostly to safeguard the collection from blazes and water damage. “There is no rapid-response unit,” Sciolino said. “Ultimately, the security of the Louvre all comes down to political will and money, and currently France simply has no money.”