Paris Museum Heist Puts Spotlight on Security Issues

Breaking into the planet's most popular museum 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 boldest of crimes, carried out for international notoriety and ensuing movie adaptations.

Experts who study patterns in global cultural theft, however, see Sunday morning’s heist at the Louvre as something more prosaic: the most recent in a string of quick-hit thefts focused more on the monetary worth of precious stones or materials than the historical importance, continuing a trend that has emerged over the last ten years in Europe, the UK and the US. The venue, they suggest, would have been of lesser importance to the thieves.

“One might wonder why thieves who want to steal valuable jewellery are entering a globally renowned 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 more secure.”

A spate of violent jewellery shop thefts mean that many stores have strengthened their security in the past few years, with armed guards on their locations and merchandise no longer shown overnight. Cultural institutions, meanwhile, look more exposed, in part because of the in-built factor of being accessible institutions in older structures, and also the current economic climate in many western countries.

“Since Covid, governments across the world have cut back on law enforcement and the arts funding,” noted Marinello. “With criminals entering the Louvre, it shows how at risk our museums have become. This is a horrible time to be a museum.”

The theft of the items – including jewelry pieces made up of precious stones and hundreds of gems, the tiara of Empress Eugénie featuring thousands of diamonds and a extremely expensive crown once owned by a royal that the thieves left by the roadside on their way out – has inevitably been compared with the historical theft of the famous painting from the same museum, performed by the worker the thief.

More relevant points of reference may be the 2019 burglary of jewellery from Dresden’s Green Vault Museum worth over millions, the taking of a £4.75m gold toilet from Blenheim Palace the same year, the recent robbery of a large gold coin from a European museum or even a series of robberies of collector items from American institutions.

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

If the artefacts were to stay whole, experts say, the criminals would find it hard to sell them. “It's impossible to sell something as immediately identifiable 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 released images of the pieces. Even a individual buyer or an auction house would want to see documentation establishing legal possession before handling such striking pieces.”

In the previous years, museums were often hesitant to go public about the disappearance of famous works of art and would stay silent out of embarrassment. Now, as cultural robberies are more widely publicised, the keeping and selling of taken items is dangerous for any lawbreaker.

“Taking a famous painting, it has to stay complete or it becomes worthless, and you have to devise a plan to keep it in hiding, maybe by passing it around dangerous individuals,” said Marinello. “There's ongoing risk to the risk of an partner informing authorities to cash in a reward.”

For comparable factors, an art detective said it was vanishingly unlikely that the robbery had been ordered. “Stolen to order is something from Hollywood movies,” he said. “No one would handle these items. It’s all around the world and in all the media. If you buy this, if you are apprehended, you end up in prison. You can't display it to your friends, you cannot bequeath it to your family.”

Altering taken items by dismantling or re-cutting does reduce the worth. When it comes to gems, it also comes with significant danger because contemporary methods give gems a bigger and lighter surface area, and antique-cut stones would either attract notice or reduce value for a concealment.

Crucially, however, melting down or re-cutting eliminates the evidence of the crime. “My guess is that the Louvre thieves will try to take the items to places with diamond expertise like a country, India or even as nearby as Antwerp, and find someone to remove the gems,” said Marinello.

The heist at the Louvre has already raised questions about security measures at the institution, with a leaked state auditor report expected to be released soon pointing out “considerable” and “persistent” delays in modernizing systems and noting that surveillance were lacking in many rooms. But security experts say displaying valuable objects in older structures with a steady stream of visitors comes with risks that are impossible to eliminate completely.

“Historic buildings are much harder to protect,” explained an art crime professor. “Many of them have large accessible windows that allows for criminals 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 buildings should be conceptualised “like a fortress”, noted a security advisor. “There should be multiple levels to repel attackers.”

Modern buildings are fitted with advanced external CCTV cameras or in-built vibration sensors that alert about a broken glass in immediately, but old museums may be reluctant to uglify their appearance. Laser scanners can be hard to install to decorated surfaces. 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 took place 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 start or end of day. Frequently when security change their shifts and prior to the museum is crowded who effectively act as additional security staff.”

Advances in technology may have introduced new gadgets that can raise the alarm more quickly and effectively, but it has also provided thieves new methods with which to bypass security measures. In Paris, the thieves accessed the museum’s upper level with a mobile equipment and breached a glass pane with a battery-powered disc cutter.

An author said the discussion in the country about the 232-year-old structure had primarily centered on crowd control in recent years, and less on protection.

The institution has an on-site brigade of about 50 permanent firefighters, but their purpose is mostly to protect the artworks from fires and water damage. “There is no rapid-response unit,” Sciolino said. “Ultimately, the safety of the Louvre all comes down to government support and funding, and currently the nation lacks sufficient money.”