🔗 Share this article

Breaking into the world’s most-visited art institution in broad daylight, taking eight pieces of priceless Napoleonic jewellery and disappearing into Paris traffic on humble scooters may seem like the boldest of crimes, carried out for international notoriety and subsequent movie adaptations.

Experts who study trends in international art crime, however, see Sunday morning’s heist at the Louvre as a more practical matter: the most recent in a string of quick-hit thefts focused more on the monetary worth of valuable gems or materials than the historical importance, continuing a pattern that has emerged over the last ten years in Germany, Britain and the US. The venue, they propose, would have been of lesser importance to the criminals.

“You may ask why thieves who want to take valuable jewellery are breaking into a world-famous museum rather than a Cartier store,” stated Christopher A Marinello. “It's straightforward: it’s because these days a Cartier store is better protected.”

A spate of aggressive retail store thefts mean that many outlets have strengthened their security in recent years, with armed guards on their locations and wares no longer kept on display overnight. Museums, meanwhile, look vulnerable, partly because of the in-built factor of being public-facing institutions in older structures, and also the current economic climate in many developed nations.

“Since Covid, authorities across the globe have cut back on law enforcement and the culture sector,” noted Marinello. “If thieves can get into the Louvre, it shows how vulnerable our institutions have become. This is a difficult time to be a museum.”

The theft of the objects – featuring necklaces made up of precious stones and hundreds of gems, the tiara of a historical figure containing nearly 2,000 diamonds and a extremely expensive diadem once owned by a royal that the thieves dropped by the roadside on their way out – has naturally drawn comparisons with the historical theft of the Mona Lisa from the Louvre, carried out by the worker the thief.

Better comparisons may be the recent theft of valuables from a German institution worth over €113m, the theft of a £4.75m gold toilet from a UK landmark the that year, the 2017 robbery of a valuable item from a European museum or even a series of thefts of sports memorabilia from American institutions.

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

If the artefacts were to stay whole, experts say, the thieves would find it hard to sell them. “There’s no way to sell something as recognizable as the museum's gems on the licit market”, said an art crime researcher of the Association for Research into Crimes against Art.

“They would be immediately recognised, especially given the Ministry of Culture has published photos of the pieces. Even a individual buyer or an sales venue would want to see paperwork establishing proper ownership before handling such striking 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 shame. These days, as art thefts 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 valueless, and you have to devise a scheme to keep it in hiding, maybe by moving it among dangerous individuals,” said Marinello. “There's ongoing risk to the risk of an partner telling the police to cash in a ransom.”

For similar reasons, an investigator said it was highly improbable that the robbery had been ordered. “Commissioned theft 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 get caught, you end up in prison. You cannot show it to your acquaintances, you cannot bequeath it to your family.”

Altering taken items by dismantling or re-cutting does reduce the worth. When it comes to diamonds, it also comes with considerable risk because modern cutting techniques give stones a larger and lighter appearance, and older-style stones would either draw unwanted attention or reduce value for a concealment.

Importantly, however, melting down or re-cutting eliminates the proof of the theft. “My guess is that the robbers will try to take the items to places with gem knowledge like Israel, India or even as close as a city, and find someone to remove the stones,” said Marinello.

The heist at the Louvre has already brought up concerns about protective steps at the institution, with a leaked official review expected to be published soon pointing out “significant” and “persistent” delays in modernizing equipment and noting that surveillance were lacking in many rooms. But security experts say displaying 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 Erin Thompson. “They often have nice big street-facing 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 secure windows.”

The best protective measures for buildings should be designed “like a fortress”, noted Peter Stürmann. “It should include multiple levels to deter attackers.”

Modern buildings are fitted with state-of-the-art surveillance systems or in-built vibration sensors that alert about a broken glass in real time, but historic institutions may be reluctant to alter their appearance. Laser scanners can be difficult to fit to decorated surfaces. Motion and sound detectors may also have to be turned off during the day as crowds stomp through a museum.

The timing of the Louvre raid, which occurred between 9.30am and 9.40am in Paris, was common of modern robberies, Stürmann said. “There’s a good reason why robberies tend to happen at either opening or closing times. It’s often when guards rotate and prior to the museum is full of visitors who effectively act as additional security staff.”

Technological progress may have introduced new gadgets that can raise the alarm more rapidly and efficiently, but it has also provided robbers new tools with which to circumvent protections. In Paris, the robbers reached the museum’s first-floor window with a vehicle-mounted ladder and breached a window with a battery-powered disc cutter.

Elaine Sciolino said the conversation in France about the 232-year-old building had mostly focused on visitor management in recent years, and less on protection.

The museum has an in-house brigade of about fifty permanent emergency personnel, but their mission is mainly to safeguard the collection from blazes and flooding. “There is no rapid-response unit,” Sciolino said. “In the end, the security of the Louvre all comes down to government support and funding, and currently France simply has no money.”