Louvre Heist Puts Spotlight on Protection Issues

Breaking into the planet's most popular museum in the middle of the day, taking eight pieces of priceless historical gems and vanishing into the city traffic on humble scooters may seem like the most audacious of crimes, executed for international notoriety and ensuing Hollywood film treatments.

Experts who observe trends in global cultural theft, however, see the recent heist at the Louvre as something more prosaic: the latest in a series of quick-hit thefts centered more on the material value of valuable gems or metals than the historical importance, continuing a pattern that has appeared over the last ten years in Europe, the UK and the US. The location, they propose, would have been of lesser importance to the criminals.

“One might wonder why criminals who want to take valuable jewellery are breaking into a globally renowned museum rather than a Cartier store,” stated Christopher A Marinello. “The answer is simple: it’s because nowadays a Cartier store is more secure.”

A series of aggressive retail store thefts mean that many outlets have beefed up their protection in the past few years, with armed guards on their premises and merchandise no longer shown overnight. Cultural institutions, meanwhile, look more exposed, partly because of the in-built factor of being accessible institutions in older structures, and partly the current economic climate in many developed nations.

“After the pandemic, governments across the globe have reduced spending on police and the culture sector,” said Marinello. “If thieves can get into the Louvre, it demonstrates how at risk 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 crown of Empress Eugénie containing nearly 2,000 diamonds and a hugely valuable diadem once owned by Napoleon III’s wife that the robbers dropped by the street on their way out – has inevitably been compared with the 1911 theft of the Mona Lisa from the same museum, carried out by the worker the thief.

Better comparisons may be the recent theft of jewellery from a German institution worth over €113m, the taking of a multi-million pound gold toilet from a UK landmark the that year, the 2017 robbery of a valuable item from Berlin’s Bode Museum or even a spate of thefts of collector items from US mining museums.

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

If the items were to stay whole, experts say, the criminals would find it hard to sell them. “It's impossible to trade something as recognizable as the Louvre’s jewels on the licit market”, commented an art crime researcher of the Association for Research into Crimes against Art.

“They are too well-known, particularly given the cultural authorities has published photos of the items. Even a private collector or an sales venue would want to see documentation establishing legal possession before touching such remarkable pieces.”

In the previous years, institutions were often reluctant to go public about the disappearance of famous works of art and would remain quiet out of embarrassment. These days, as art thefts are more widely publicised, the storage and selling of stolen art is risky business for any lawbreaker.

“If you steal a Picasso, it has to remain intact or it becomes valueless, and you have to devise a plan to conceal it, perhaps by passing it around dangerous individuals,” said Marinello. “There's ongoing risk to the danger of an accomplice informing authorities to cash in a reward.”

For comparable factors, an art detective said it was highly improbable that the theft had been ordered. “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 friends, you cannot bequeath it to your children.”

Altering stolen works by melting down or re-cutting does reduce the worth. When it comes to diamonds, it also comes with significant danger because modern cutting techniques give stones a larger and lighter surface area, and antique-cut stones would either draw unwanted attention or reduce value for a coverup.

Crucially, however, dismantling or reshaping eliminates the evidence of the theft. “My guess is that the Louvre thieves will try to bring the stolen goods to places with diamond expertise like Israel, another nation or even as nearby as Antwerp, and find someone to remove the gems,” suggested Marinello.

The heist at the Louvre has already brought up concerns about protective steps at the museum, with a unauthorized official review expected to be published soon pointing out “significant” and “ongoing” delays in updating equipment and observing that surveillance were lacking in multiple areas. But security experts say showing precious items in older structures with a constant flow of visitors comes with dangers that are impossible to remove entirely.

“Historic buildings are much harder to secure,” said Erin Thompson. “Many of them have nice big street-facing windows that allows for thieves to get away, and there may be building protection statutes in place that mean you can’t fit them with proper bulletproof glass.”

The best protective measures for structures should be conceptualised “like a fortress”, noted a security advisor. “It should include several layers to deter attackers.”

Modern buildings are equipped with state-of-the-art surveillance systems or in-built vibration sensors that raise alarm about a smashed window in real time, but old museums may be reluctant to uglify their exteriors. Detection devices can be difficult to install to stuccoed ceilings. Sensors may also have to be turned off during the day as crowds walk through a museum.

The timing of the robbery, which occurred between morning hours local time, was typical of recent thefts, Stürmann said. “There’s a good reason why thefts tend to happen at either start or end of day. Frequently when guards rotate and before the museum is full of visitors who actually act as extra protection.”

Advances in technology may have thrown up new gadgets that can raise the alarm more rapidly and effectively, but it has also given robbers new methods with which to circumvent security measures. In the city, the thieves reached the museum’s upper level with a vehicle-mounted ladder and cut through a window with a electric tool.

Elaine Sciolino said the discussion in France about the historic structure had mostly focused on crowd control in the past decade, and not as much on protection.

The museum has an on-site team of about fifty permanent emergency personnel, but their purpose is mostly to safeguard the collection from fires and water damage. “There isn't a quick reaction team,” Sciolino said. “Ultimately, the security of the Louvre all comes down to government support and funding, and currently the nation lacks sufficient resources.”