Louvre Robbery Shines Focus on Security Issues

Breaking into the world’s most-visited museum in the middle of the day, grabbing eight items of invaluable Napoleonic jewellery and disappearing into the city traffic on humble scooters may seem like the most audacious of crimes, carried out for international notoriety and ensuing Hollywood film treatments.

Experts who study patterns in global cultural theft, however, see Sunday morning’s robbery at the Louvre as a more practical matter: the latest in a string of smash-and-grab thefts centered more on the material value of valuable gems or materials than the artifacts’ significance, continuing a pattern that has appeared over the last decade in Europe, Britain and the US. The location, they propose, would have been of secondary concern to the thieves.

“One might wonder why thieves who want to steal expensive jewellery are entering a globally renowned museum rather than a Cartier store,” said Christopher A Marinello. “It's straightforward: it’s because these days a high-end boutique is more secure.”

A series of aggressive jewellery shop thefts mean that many stores have beefed up their security in recent years, with armed guards on their premises and wares no longer shown overnight. Cultural institutions, meanwhile, look vulnerable, in part because of the in-built factor of being public-facing institutions in older structures, and partly the financial situation in many western countries.

“After the pandemic, governments across the globe have reduced spending on law enforcement and the arts funding,” noted Marinello. “With criminals entering the Louvre, it demonstrates how vulnerable our institutions have become. This is a difficult time to be a museum.”

The theft of the items – including necklaces made up of eight sapphires and 631 diamonds, the tiara of Empress Eugénie featuring nearly 2,000 diamonds and a hugely valuable diadem once owned by Napoleon III’s wife that the robbers left by the street on their way out – has inevitably drawn comparisons with the 1911 theft of the famous painting from the same museum, performed by the Italian handyman Vincenzo Peruggia.

More relevant comparisons may be the recent burglary of valuables from Dresden’s Green Vault Museum worth over millions, the taking of a £4.75m gold toilet from Blenheim Palace the same year, the 2017 heist of a valuable item from Berlin’s Bode Museum or even a series of thefts of collector items from American institutions.

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

If the artefacts were to stay whole, specialists say, the thieves would struggle to find a buyer. “It's impossible to sell something as immediately identifiable as the museum's gems on the licit market”, commented 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 items. Even a private collector or an sales venue would want to see paperwork establishing legal possession before handling such remarkable pieces.”

In the past, museums were often reluctant to go public about the disappearance of well-known works of art and would remain quiet out of shame. Now, as art thefts are more widely publicised, the keeping and selling of taken items is dangerous for any lawbreaker.

“If you steal a Picasso, it has to stay complete or it becomes worthless, and you have to conceive of a plan to keep it in hiding, perhaps by moving it among difficult criminal actors,” noted Marinello. “And you’re constantly exposed to the risk of an partner informing authorities to collect a reward.”

For comparable factors, an art detective said it was vanishingly unlikely that the robbery had been commissioned. “Commissioned theft is something from Hollywood movies,” 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 go to jail. You cannot show it to your acquaintances, you cannot leave it to your family.”

Modifying taken items by melting down or re-cutting does reduce the value. When it comes to gems, it also comes with considerable risk because modern cutting techniques give stones a bigger and lighter appearance, and older-style stones would either attract notice or reduce value for a coverup.

Crucially, however, melting down or re-cutting removes the proof of the crime. “I suspect that the Louvre thieves will try to bring the items to places with diamond expertise like Israel, India or even as nearby as Antwerp, and locate an expert to cut out the gems,” suggested Marinello.

The heist at the Louvre has already brought up concerns about protective steps at the museum, with a unauthorized state auditor report expected to be published next month pointing out “considerable” and “persistent” slow progress in updating equipment and observing that security cameras were lacking in multiple areas. But security experts say displaying valuable objects in historic buildings with a constant flow of guests comes with risks that are impossible to eliminate completely.

“Historic buildings are more difficult to protect,” said an art crime professor. “They often have large accessible windows that allows for thieves to escape, and there may be preservation laws in place that mean you can’t fit them with proper bulletproof glass.”

The most solid protective measures for structures should be conceptualised “like a fortress”, said Peter Stürmann. “It should include multiple levels to deter intruders.”

Modern buildings are fitted with advanced surveillance systems or in-built vibration sensors that raise alarm about a smashed window in real time, but historic institutions may be reluctant to uglify their appearance. Detection devices can be hard to install to stuccoed ceilings. Motion and sound detectors may also have to be disabled during the day as hordes of visitors walk through a museum.

The schedule of the Louvre raid, which occurred between morning hours local time, was common of modern robberies, Stürmann said. “It's logical why robberies tend to happen at either start or end of day. Frequently when security rotate and before the museum is crowded who effectively act as additional security staff.”

Advances in technology may have thrown up new devices that can raise the alarm more rapidly and effectively, but it has also given robbers new methods with which to circumvent protections. In the city, the robbers accessed the museum’s upper level with a vehicle-mounted ladder and breached a window with a battery-powered disc cutter.

An author said the discussion in the country about the 232-year-old building had primarily focused on visitor management in recent years, and less on security.

The institution has an on-site team of about 50 permanent emergency personnel, but their purpose is mostly to safeguard the artworks from blazes and water damage. “There is no rapid-response unit,” Sciolino said. “Ultimately, the safety of the Louvre all depends on political will and money, and currently the nation simply has no money.”