🔗 Share this article

Entering the planet's most popular museum in broad daylight, taking eight pieces of priceless historical gems and disappearing into Paris traffic on humble scooters may seem like the boldest of crimes, carried out for international notoriety and ensuing Hollywood film treatments.

Specialists who study patterns in global cultural theft, however, see the recent robbery at the Louvre as a more practical matter: the latest in a series of quick-hit thefts centered more on the monetary worth of precious stones or materials than the artifacts’ significance, perpetuating a trend that has emerged over the last decade in Europe, Britain and the US. The location, they suggest, would have been of secondary concern to the criminals.

“You may ask why thieves who want to take valuable jewellery are entering a globally renowned museum rather than a Cartier store,” said an expert in art recovery. “The answer is simple: it’s because these days a Cartier store is better protected.”

A spate of violent retail store thefts mean that many stores have beefed up their protection in the past few years, with security personnel on their premises and merchandise no longer shown overnight. Cultural institutions, meanwhile, look vulnerable, partly because of the in-built reason of being accessible institutions in older structures, and also the current economic climate in many western countries.

“After the pandemic, governments across the world have cut back on law enforcement and the culture sector,” noted Marinello. “If thieves can get into the Louvre, it demonstrates how vulnerable our museums have become. This is a horrible time to be a museum.”

The robbery of the items – featuring jewelry pieces made up of eight sapphires and hundreds of gems, the tiara of a historical figure featuring nearly 2,000 diamonds and a extremely expensive diadem once owned by a royal that the thieves dropped by the street on their way out – has inevitably drawn comparisons with the 1911 theft of the famous painting from the Louvre, carried out by the Italian handyman the thief.

Better comparisons may be the 2019 theft of jewellery from a German institution worth over millions, the taking of a multi-million pound gold toilet from a UK landmark the same year, the recent heist of a large gold coin from Berlin’s Bode Museum or even a spate of thefts of sports memorabilia from US mining museums.

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

If the items were to remain intact, specialists say, the thieves would struggle to sell them. “There’s no way to trade something as immediately identifiable as the Louvre’s jewels on the legal marketplace”, commented Lynda Albertson of the Association for Research into Crimes against Art.

“They are too well-known, especially given the Ministry of Culture has released images of the items. Even a individual buyer or an sales venue would want to see documentation confirming legal possession before handling such striking pieces.”

In the previous years, institutions were often reluctant to go public 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 selling of stolen art is risky business for any criminal.

“If you steal a Picasso, it has to stay complete or it becomes worthless, and you have to devise a scheme to keep it in hiding, perhaps by passing it around difficult criminal actors,” said Marinello. “There's ongoing risk to the risk of an partner telling the police to cash in a reward.”

For comparable factors, an investigator said it was vanishingly unlikely that the robbery had been commissioned. “Commissioned theft is something from Hollywood movies,” he said. “Nobody would touch this. It’s all around the world and in all the media. If you buy this, if you are apprehended, you end up in prison. You can't display it to your friends, you cannot leave it to your children.”

Modifying stolen works by melting down or reshaping does lower the value. When it comes to gems, it also comes with considerable risk because modern methods give stones a larger and brighter appearance, and antique-cut stones would either draw unwanted attention or reduce value for a concealment.

Crucially, however, melting down or re-cutting removes the proof of the crime. “My guess is that the Louvre thieves will try to bring the stolen goods to locations with diamond expertise like a country, India or even as close as Antwerp, and locate an expert to cut out the gems,” suggested Marinello.

The heist at the Louvre has already raised questions about protective steps at the museum, with a unauthorized state auditor report expected to be published soon criticising “considerable” and “ongoing” delays in modernizing systems and observing that security cameras were missing in many rooms. But specialists say showing valuable objects in older structures with a steady stream of guests comes with risks that are not possible to remove entirely.

“Older structures are more difficult to protect,” said an art crime professor. “Many of them have large accessible windows that makes it easy for criminals 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 security systems for buildings should be conceptualised “like a fortress”, noted a security advisor. “It should include multiple levels to repel attackers.”

Contemporary structures are fitted with advanced external CCTV cameras or integrated vibration sensors that alert about a smashed window in real time, but historic institutions may be hesitant to uglify their exteriors. Laser scanners can be hard to fit to stuccoed ceilings. Sensors may also have to be disabled during the day as crowds stomp through a museum.

The schedule of the robbery, which took place between morning hours in Paris, was common of recent thefts, Stürmann said. “It's logical why thefts tend to happen at either opening or closing times. It’s often when security rotate and before the museum is crowded who actually act as extra protection.”

Technological progress may have introduced new gadgets that can raise the alarm more quickly and efficiently, but it has also given thieves new methods with which to circumvent protections. In Paris, the thieves accessed the museum’s first-floor window with a vehicle-mounted ladder and cut through a window with a electric tool.

Elaine Sciolino said the discussion in the country about the historic building had mostly centered on visitor management in recent years, and less on protection.

The institution has an on-site brigade of about fifty full-time emergency personnel, but their mission is mostly to protect the collection from blazes and flooding. “There is no quick reaction team,” Sciolino said. “Ultimately, the security of the Louvre all depends on government support and funding, and at present the nation lacks sufficient resources.”