Louvre Robbery Shines Spotlight on Security Concerns

Entering the planet's most popular museum in the middle of the day, taking eight pieces of priceless historical gems and disappearing into Paris traffic on humble scooters may seem like the most audacious of crimes, carried out for international notoriety and subsequent movie adaptations.

Specialists who study trends in global cultural theft, however, see the recent heist at the Louvre as something more prosaic: the most recent in a string of quick-hit thefts centered more on the material value of precious stones or materials than the historical importance, perpetuating a trend that has appeared over the last decade in Europe, the UK and the US. The venue, they suggest, would have been of secondary concern to the criminals.

“You may ask why criminals who want to steal expensive jewellery are breaking into a globally renowned museum rather than a luxury jewelry store,” stated an expert in art recovery. “The answer is simple: it’s because nowadays a Cartier store is better protected.”

A spate of violent retail store thefts indicate that many stores have strengthened their security in recent years, with security personnel on their locations and merchandise no longer shown overnight. Cultural institutions, on the other hand, look more exposed, in part because of the inherent factor of being public-facing institutions in historic buildings, and partly the financial situation in many developed nations.

“After the pandemic, governments across the globe have cut back on police and the arts funding,” said Marinello. “If thieves can get into the Louvre, it demonstrates how vulnerable our institutions have become. This is a horrible time to be a museum.”

The theft of the objects – including jewelry pieces made up of eight sapphires and hundreds of gems, the tiara of a historical figure containing thousands of diamonds and a hugely valuable diadem once owned 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 worker Vincenzo Peruggia.

Better comparisons may be the 2019 burglary of jewellery from Dresden’s Green Vault Museum worth over millions, the theft of a multi-million pound valuable object from Blenheim Palace the same year, the recent robbery of a large gold coin from Berlin’s Bode Museum or even a series of thefts of sports memorabilia from American institutions.

“There’s a simple pattern here,” explained Marinello. “Break in, take items, and dismantle them as rapidly as possible.”

If the items were to stay whole, specialists say, the criminals would find it hard to find a buyer. “It's impossible to trade something as immediately identifiable as the Louvre’s jewels on the legal marketplace”, said an art crime researcher of the Association for Research into Crimes against Art.

“They are too well-known, especially given the cultural authorities has released images of the items. Even a individual buyer or an sales venue would want to see documentation establishing proper ownership before handling such striking pieces.”

In the previous years, museums were often hesitant to announce publicly about the loss of well-known art pieces and would remain quiet out of shame. Now, as cultural robberies are more widely publicised, the storage and sale of stolen art is risky business for any criminal.

“Taking a Picasso, it has to remain intact or it becomes valueless, and you have to conceive of a plan to keep it in hiding, maybe by passing it around dangerous individuals,” noted Marinello. “There's ongoing risk to the danger of an partner informing authorities to collect a ransom.”

For comparable factors, an art detective said it was vanishingly unlikely that the theft 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 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 dismantling or re-cutting does reduce the value. When it comes to gems, it also comes with considerable risk because contemporary methods give stones a bigger and brighter appearance, and older-style stones would either draw unwanted attention or barter the price down for a concealment.

Importantly, however, melting down or re-cutting removes the evidence of the crime. “My guess is that the Louvre thieves will try to bring the items to locations with diamond expertise like a country, India or even as nearby as a city, and find someone to cut out the gems,” suggested Marinello.

The heist at the Louvre has already raised questions about protective steps at the museum, with a leaked official review expected to be released soon pointing out “considerable” and “persistent” slow progress in modernizing systems and noting that surveillance were lacking in multiple areas. But security experts say showing precious items in older structures with a steady stream of guests comes with risks that are not possible to remove entirely.

“Older structures are much harder to secure,” explained Erin Thompson. “They often have large accessible windows that allows for criminals to escape, and there may be building protection statutes in place that mean you can’t fit them with secure windows.”

The best security systems for structures should be designed “as a stronghold”, noted Peter Stürmann. “There should be multiple levels to deter attackers.”

Modern buildings are equipped with advanced external CCTV cameras or in-built seismic detectors that raise alarm about a broken glass in real time, but old museums may be hesitant to uglify their exteriors. Detection devices can be hard to fit to decorated surfaces. Motion and sound detectors may also have to be turned off during the day as crowds walk through a museum.

The timing of the Louvre raid, which occurred between 9.30am and 9.40am local time, 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 change their shifts and prior to the museum is full of visitors who effectively act as additional security staff.”

Technological progress may have thrown up new gadgets that can raise the alarm more rapidly and effectively, but it has also given robbers new tools with which to bypass protections. In Paris, the robbers accessed the museum’s first-floor window with a mobile equipment and cut through a window with a electric tool.

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

The institution has an in-house brigade of about 50 permanent firefighters, but their mission is mostly to protect the collection from fires and flooding. “There is no rapid-response unit,” Sciolino said. “In the end, the safety of the Louvre all comes down to political will and funding, and at present the nation simply has no resources.”