Paris Museum Robbery Puts Spotlight on Security Concerns

Entering the world’s most-visited art institution in the middle of the day, grabbing eight pieces of priceless Napoleonic jewellery and disappearing into the city traffic on simple scooters may seem like the most audacious of crimes, executed for global fame and subsequent movie adaptations.

Specialists who observe trends in international art crime, however, see Sunday morning’s heist at the Louvre as a more practical matter: the most recent in a series of smash-and-grab thefts centered more on the material value of valuable gems or metals than the historical importance, continuing a trend that has emerged over the last ten years in Europe, Britain and the US. The location, they suggest, would have been of secondary concern to the criminals.

“One might wonder why criminals who want to steal valuable jewellery are breaking into a globally renowned museum rather than a Cartier store,” said an expert in art recovery. “The answer is simple: it’s because nowadays a Cartier store is more secure.”

A spate of violent jewellery shop thefts indicate that many stores have strengthened their security in the past few years, with security personnel on their premises and merchandise no longer shown overnight. Cultural institutions, on the other hand, look more exposed, partly because of the inherent 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 reduced spending on police and the arts funding,” noted Marinello. “With criminals entering the Louvre, it demonstrates how at risk our museums have become. This is a difficult time to be a museum.”

The robbery of the objects – including necklaces made up of eight sapphires and 631 diamonds, the tiara of a historical figure featuring nearly 2,000 diamonds and a extremely expensive diadem once owned by Napoleon III’s wife that the robbers dropped by the roadside on their way out – has inevitably drawn comparisons with the historical theft of the famous painting from the same museum, performed by the worker 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 valuable object from Blenheim Palace the same year, the 2017 robbery of a large gold coin from Berlin’s Bode Museum or even a spate of robberies of sports memorabilia from US mining museums.

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

If the artefacts were to stay whole, specialists say, the criminals would find it hard to find a buyer. “It's impossible to sell something as immediately identifiable as the Louvre’s jewels on the licit market”, said Lynda Albertson of the a relevant organization.

“They would be immediately recognised, particularly given the Ministry of Culture has published photos of the items. Even a individual buyer or an auction house would want to see documentation establishing proper ownership before touching such striking pieces.”

In the previous years, museums were often reluctant to go public about the loss of well-known works of art and would stay silent out of embarrassment. Now, as art thefts are more widely publicised, the storage and sale of taken items is risky business for any criminal.

“If you steal a Picasso, it has to remain intact or it becomes worthless, and you have to devise a plan to keep it in hiding, perhaps by moving it among difficult criminal actors,” noted Marinello. “There's ongoing risk to the risk of an partner informing authorities to collect a reward.”

For similar reasons, an investigator said it was vanishingly unlikely that the theft had been commissioned. “Stolen to order is something from Hollywood movies,” he said. “Nobody would touch this. It’s all around the world and in all the media. 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 children.”

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

Crucially, however, melting down or reshaping eliminates the evidence of the theft. “I suspect that the Louvre thieves will try to take the stolen goods to locations with diamond expertise like Israel, another nation or even as close as Antwerp, and find someone to cut out the stones,” suggested Marinello.

The robbery at the Louvre has already brought up concerns about protective steps at the museum, with a leaked official review expected to be released soon criticising “significant” and “ongoing” slow progress in updating systems and observing that surveillance were lacking in many rooms. But security experts say showing precious items in older structures with a steady stream of visitors comes with risks that are not possible to eliminate completely.

“Older structures are more difficult to secure,” said an art crime professor. “They often have large accessible 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 security systems for buildings should be conceptualised “as a stronghold”, said Peter Stürmann. “It should include multiple levels to repel intruders.”

Modern buildings are equipped with state-of-the-art external CCTV cameras or integrated vibration sensors that raise alarm about a smashed window in immediately, but old museums may be reluctant to alter their appearance. Laser scanners can be hard to fit to stuccoed ceilings. Motion and sound detectors may also have to be turned off during the day as crowds walk through a museum.

The timing of the robbery, which took place between morning hours local time, was typical of recent thefts, Stürmann said. “It's logical why robberies tend to happen at either start or end of day. Frequently when guards change their shifts and prior to the museum is full of visitors who effectively act as extra protection.”

Technological progress may have introduced new gadgets that can raise the alarm more quickly and efficiently, but it has also given thieves new tools with which to circumvent security measures. In Paris, the robbers reached the museum’s upper level with a vehicle-mounted ladder and breached a glass pane with a battery-powered disc cutter.

Elaine Sciolino said the conversation in the country about the historic structure had mostly centered on crowd control in recent years, and not as much on protection.

The institution has an on-site team of about fifty full-time firefighters, but their purpose is mostly to protect the artworks from blazes and flooding. “There isn't a rapid-response unit,” Sciolino said. “Ultimately, the security of the Louvre all depends on political will and funding, and at present France lacks sufficient money.”