Breaking into the world’s most-visited museum in the middle of the day, taking eight items of invaluable historical gems and disappearing into Paris traffic on humble scooters may seem like the most audacious of crimes, carried out for international notoriety and ensuing movie adaptations.
Experts who study trends in international art crime, however, see Sunday morning’s heist at the Louvre as something more prosaic: the most recent in a string of smash-and-grab thefts centered more on the material value of precious stones or materials than the artifacts’ significance, perpetuating a pattern that has appeared over the last decade in Germany, Britain and the US. The venue, they propose, would have been of lesser importance to the criminals.
“One might wonder why thieves who want to take valuable jewellery are breaking into a world-famous museum rather than a Cartier store,” stated an expert in art recovery. “The answer is simple: it’s because nowadays a high-end boutique is better protected.”
A spate of violent retail store thefts indicate that many outlets have beefed up their security in the past few years, with security personnel on their premises and wares no longer kept on display overnight. Museums, on the other hand, look more exposed, partly because of the inherent reason of being public-facing institutions in older structures, and partly the current economic climate in many western countries.
“After the pandemic, authorities across the globe have cut back on police and the culture sector,” said Marinello. “If thieves can get into the Louvre, it demonstrates how vulnerable our museums have become. This is a difficult time to be a museum.”
The robbery of the items – including jewelry pieces made up of precious stones and hundreds of gems, the crown of a historical figure containing thousands of diamonds and a hugely valuable diadem once possessed by Napoleon III’s wife that the thieves left by the street on their way out – has naturally drawn comparisons with the historical theft of the Mona Lisa from the Louvre, performed by the Italian handyman Vincenzo Peruggia.
More relevant points of reference 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 same year, the recent heist of a large gold coin from a European museum or even a series 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 stay whole, experts say, the thieves would find it hard to sell them. “It's impossible to trade 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 are too well-known, 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 legal possession before touching such remarkable pieces.”
In the past, institutions were often reluctant to go public about the disappearance of well-known art pieces and would stay silent out of shame. These days, as cultural robberies are more reported on, the keeping and sale of taken items is dangerous for any criminal.
“If you steal a famous painting, it has to stay complete or it becomes valueless, and you have to devise a plan to keep it in hiding, maybe by moving it among dangerous individuals,” said Marinello. “There's ongoing risk to the risk of an accomplice telling the police to cash in a ransom.”
For comparable factors, an art detective said it was vanishingly unlikely that the theft had been commissioned. “Commissioned theft 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 are apprehended, you end up in prison. You can't display it to your acquaintances, you cannot bequeath it to your family.”
Modifying taken items by dismantling or re-cutting does lower the value. When it comes to gems, it also comes with considerable risk because contemporary cutting techniques give stones a bigger and lighter surface area, and older-style stones would either attract notice or barter the price down for a concealment.
Importantly, however, melting down or re-cutting removes the proof of the theft. “My guess is that the Louvre thieves will try to bring the items to locations with diamond expertise like Israel, another nation or even as nearby as a city, and find someone to remove the gems,” suggested Marinello.
The heist at the Louvre has already brought up concerns about security measures at the institution, with a unauthorized official review expected to be published next month criticising “considerable” and “ongoing” delays in updating equipment and noting that security cameras were missing in many rooms. But specialists say showing precious items in older structures with a steady stream of visitors comes with dangers that are not possible to eliminate completely.
“Older structures are more difficult to secure,” explained an art crime professor. “Many of them have nice big street-facing windows that makes it easy 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 most solid protective measures for structures should be designed “like a fortress”, said Peter Stürmann. “It should include several layers to repel attackers.”
Modern buildings are equipped with advanced external CCTV cameras or integrated vibration sensors that raise alarm about a smashed window in immediately, but historic institutions may be reluctant to uglify their exteriors. Laser scanners can be difficult to install to decorated surfaces. Motion and sound detectors may also have to be turned off during the daytime as hordes of visitors stomp through a museum.
The schedule of the Louvre raid, which took place between morning hours in Paris, was typical of modern robberies, Stürmann said. “It's logical why robberies tend to happen at either opening or closing times. Frequently when guards rotate and prior to the museum is crowded who effectively act as additional security staff.”
Technological progress may have thrown up new devices that can notify more quickly and efficiently, but it has also provided robbers new methods with which to bypass security measures. In the city, the robbers reached the museum’s first-floor window with a vehicle-mounted ladder and cut through a window with a battery-powered disc cutter.
An author said the conversation in France about the 232-year-old building had primarily centered on crowd control in recent years, and less on protection.
The museum has an on-site brigade of about fifty full-time firefighters, but their purpose is mostly to protect the artworks from blazes 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 money, and currently the nation simply has no money.”
