🔗 Share this article

Entering the planet's most popular art institution in the middle of the day, taking eight pieces of priceless Napoleonic jewellery and vanishing into the city traffic on humble scooters may seem like the boldest of crimes, carried out for international notoriety and subsequent Hollywood film treatments.

Experts who observe patterns in international art crime, however, see Sunday morning’s robbery at the Louvre as something more prosaic: the most recent in a series of smash-and-grab thefts centered more on the material value of precious stones or metals than the artifacts’ significance, 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.

“You may ask why thieves who want to steal valuable jewellery are entering a globally renowned museum rather than a Cartier store,” said an expert in art recovery. “The answer is simple: it’s because nowadays a high-end boutique is better protected.”

A spate of violent jewellery shop thefts indicate that many outlets have strengthened their security in recent years, with security personnel on their premises and merchandise no longer shown overnight. Cultural institutions, meanwhile, look vulnerable, in part because of the in-built factor of being accessible institutions in historic buildings, and also the financial situation in many developed nations.

“After the pandemic, governments across the globe have reduced spending on law enforcement and the arts funding,” said Marinello. “With criminals entering the Louvre, it shows how at risk our institutions 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 a historical figure containing thousands of diamonds and a extremely expensive diadem once owned by a royal that the robbers left by the street on their way out – has naturally drawn comparisons with the historical theft of the famous painting from the Louvre, performed by the Italian handyman Vincenzo Peruggia.

More relevant comparisons may be the recent burglary of jewellery from a German institution worth over €113m, the theft of a multi-million pound valuable object from Blenheim Palace the that year, the recent robbery of a large gold coin from a European museum or even a series of robberies of collector items from US mining museums.

“It's a clear trend here,” said 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. “There’s no way to trade 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 would be immediately recognised, especially given the Ministry of Culture has released images of the items. Even a private collector or an sales venue would want to see documentation establishing proper ownership before handling such remarkable pieces.”

In the previous years, institutions were often reluctant to announce publicly about the loss of well-known art pieces and would stay silent out of shame. These days, as art thefts are more widely publicised, the storage and selling of taken items is risky business for any lawbreaker.

“If you steal a famous painting, it has to remain intact or it becomes valueless, and you have to conceive of a scheme to keep it in hiding, perhaps by passing it around dangerous individuals,” noted Marinello. “There's ongoing risk to the risk of an partner telling the police to collect a reward.”

For comparable factors, an investigator said it was highly improbable that the theft had been ordered. “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 buy this, if you are apprehended, you end up in prison. You can't display it to your friends, you cannot leave it to your children.”

Altering stolen works by dismantling or reshaping does reduce the value. When it comes to gems, it also comes with considerable risk because contemporary cutting techniques give stones a bigger and lighter appearance, and older-style stones would either draw unwanted attention or reduce value for a coverup.

Crucially, however, dismantling or re-cutting removes the evidence of the theft. “I suspect that the Louvre thieves will try to take the items to locations with gem knowledge like a country, another nation or even as close as a city, and find someone to cut out the gems,” suggested 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 criticising “significant” and “persistent” slow progress in updating equipment and noting that surveillance were missing in multiple areas. But specialists say showing precious items in historic buildings with a constant flow of visitors comes with risks that are impossible to eliminate completely.

“Older structures are much harder to secure,” said an art crime professor. “Many of them 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 can’t fit them with proper bulletproof glass.”

The best protective measures for buildings should be conceptualised “like a fortress”, said Peter Stürmann. “There should be several layers to repel intruders.”

Modern buildings are fitted with state-of-the-art surveillance systems or in-built seismic detectors that raise alarm about a broken glass in immediately, but historic institutions may be hesitant to uglify their exteriors. Detection devices can be hard to install to stuccoed ceilings. Sensors may also have to be turned off during the daytime as crowds stomp through a museum.

The schedule of the Louvre raid, which occurred between morning hours in Paris, was common of recent thefts, Stürmann said. “It's logical why thefts tend to happen at either opening or closing times. Frequently when security rotate and before the museum is full of visitors who effectively act as extra protection.”

Technological progress may have introduced new devices that can notify more rapidly and effectively, but it has also provided robbers new tools with which to bypass protections. In Paris, the thieves reached the museum’s upper level with a mobile equipment and breached a glass pane with a electric tool.

An author said the conversation in the country about the historic structure had primarily focused on crowd control in the past decade, and less on security.

The museum has an on-site team of about fifty permanent emergency personnel, but their mission is mostly to protect the artworks from fires and water damage. “There is no quick reaction team,” Sciolino said. “Ultimately, the security of the Louvre all depends on political will and money, and currently France simply has no money.”