Paris Museum Heist Shines Spotlight on Security Concerns

Entering the world’s most-visited museum in the middle of the day, grabbing eight items of invaluable historical gems and vanishing into the city traffic on simple scooters may seem like the boldest of crimes, carried out for international notoriety and subsequent Hollywood film treatments.

Experts who observe patterns in global cultural theft, however, see the recent robbery at the Louvre as something more prosaic: the most recent in a series of smash-and-grab thefts focused more on the material value of precious stones or metals 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.

“You may ask why criminals who want to take expensive jewellery are breaking into a world-famous 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 violent jewellery shop thefts indicate that many stores have beefed up their protection in the past few years, with armed guards on their locations and wares no longer kept on display overnight. Museums, on the other hand, look more exposed, in part because of the in-built factor of being public-facing institutions in historic buildings, and also the current economic climate in many western countries.

“After the pandemic, governments across the globe have cut back on police and the arts funding,” said Marinello. “If thieves can get into the Louvre, it shows how at risk our museums have become. This is a difficult time to be a museum.”

The robbery of the objects – including jewelry pieces made up of precious stones and hundreds of gems, the crown of Empress Eugénie featuring nearly 2,000 diamonds and a hugely valuable crown once owned by Napoleon III’s wife that the thieves dropped by the street on their way out – has inevitably been compared with the historical theft of the famous painting from the same museum, carried out by the worker Vincenzo Peruggia.

Better comparisons may be the 2019 burglary of valuables from Dresden’s Green Vault Museum worth over €113m, the theft of a multi-million pound gold toilet from a UK landmark the that year, the 2017 heist of a valuable item from Berlin’s Bode Museum or even a series of thefts of sports memorabilia from American institutions.

“It's a clear trend here,” explained Marinello. “Break in, take items, and dismantle them as rapidly as possible.”

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

“They would be immediately recognised, especially given the Ministry of Culture has released images of the pieces. Even a individual buyer or an auction house would want to see paperwork confirming proper ownership before handling such remarkable pieces.”

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

“If you steal a famous painting, it has to stay complete or it becomes worthless, and you have to devise a plan to conceal it, maybe by moving it among difficult criminal actors,” said Marinello. “And you’re constantly exposed to the danger of an partner informing authorities to collect a ransom.”

For similar reasons, an investigator said it was highly improbable that the theft had been ordered. “Stolen to order is something from films,” he said. “Nobody would touch this. It's global news and in all the media. 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 taken items by dismantling or re-cutting does lower the worth. When it comes to diamonds, it also comes with considerable risk because modern methods give gems a bigger and lighter appearance, and older-style stones would either attract notice or barter the price down for a concealment.

Importantly, however, dismantling or re-cutting eliminates the evidence of the theft. “My guess is that the robbers will try to bring the stolen goods to locations with diamond expertise like Israel, another nation or even as close as Antwerp, and locate an expert to cut out the stones,” suggested Marinello.

The heist at the Louvre has already brought up concerns about protective steps at the museum, with a leaked state auditor report expected to be released soon criticising “significant” and “ongoing” slow progress in modernizing equipment and observing that surveillance were missing in many rooms. But security experts say displaying precious items in older structures with a steady stream of guests comes with risks that are impossible to remove entirely.

“Older structures are much harder to protect,” said Erin Thompson. “They often have nice big street-facing windows that makes it easy for thieves to escape, and there may be building protection statutes in place that mean you are unable to install them with proper bulletproof glass.”

The best security systems for buildings should be conceptualised “as a stronghold”, noted a security advisor. “It should include multiple levels to deter attackers.”

Modern buildings are fitted with advanced surveillance systems or in-built seismic detectors that alert about a broken glass in immediately, but old museums may be hesitant to uglify their appearance. Laser scanners can be hard to install to decorated surfaces. Motion and sound detectors may also have to be turned off during the day as crowds walk through a museum.

The timing of the Louvre raid, which took place between morning hours local time, was typical of modern robberies, Stürmann said. “There’s a good reason why thefts tend to happen at either opening or closing times. Frequently when guards change their shifts and before the museum is crowded who effectively act as additional security staff.”

Advances in technology may have thrown up new devices that can notify more quickly and efficiently, but it has also provided robbers new tools with which to circumvent security measures. In Paris, the robbers accessed the museum’s first-floor window with a vehicle-mounted ladder and cut through a glass pane with a battery-powered disc cutter.

Elaine Sciolino said the conversation in the country about the 232-year-old structure had primarily focused on crowd control in recent years, and less on protection.

The institution has an on-site team of about fifty full-time emergency personnel, but their purpose is mostly to safeguard the collection from blazes and flooding. “There isn't a rapid-response unit,” Sciolino said. “Ultimately, the safety of the Louvre all comes down to political will and funding, and currently the nation simply has no resources.”