Museums are notoriously difficult to protect. The Paris Heists may have more in common with the film’s “smash and grab” style than its flashy plot.
Louvre robbery: see the stolen jewels
Eight “precious” jewels have been stolen from the Louvre Museum in Paris. This is what it is about.
The robbers arrived about 30 minutes after the museum opened.
French authorities have described the dramatic scenes that have unfolded at the world’s most visited museum since the brazen robbery on the morning of October 19th.
As visitors flock to the Louvre, a group of robbers find another way into the museum. The suspects approached the Louvre in a truck. Part of the museum was originally built as a castle. They stopped on the south side of the road near the Seine River.
Two of them used a ladder to climb onto a second-floor balcony, carrying the tools they had used to break through a window leading to the gilded Apollo Museum, where French royal jewels are displayed. Once inside, an alarm sounded and museum staff evacuated panicked tourists as they smashed a glass display case and stole nine pieces of historic jewellery.
Less than seven minutes after the brazen robbery began, they fled on a motorbike in broad daylight. Despite several setbacks, including dropping a gold crown encrusted with diamonds and emeralds while out and about, leaving behind forensic evidence and being caught on security cameras, the robbery and the jewels have yet to be discovered.
Stealing royal treasures from iconic locations may sound like a scene from a heist movie, but the reality is far less glamorous than you might think.
Robert Wittman, a former FBI agent who founded the bureau’s International Art Crimes Team, said the main difference between real-life and fictional robberies is the level of security the thieves must overcome.
“There were no laser beams they had to dance around like with Catherine Zeta-Jones in Entrapment, and there were no walls like Pierce Brosnan had in The Thomas Crown Affair,” said Whitman, author of Priceless: How We Went Undercover to Save the World’s Stolen Treasures.
“None of that is true.”
Instead, museums are notoriously difficult to protect. This means that the Paris robbers may not have been the elite criminals that the movie suggests.
“It’s like ‘Ocean’s Eleven,’ but sloppier…This was an elite smash-and-grab,” said Christopher A. Marinello, founder of Art Recovery International, which has helped return about $600 million worth of stolen art. “It wasn’t the heist of the century, but so far it could certainly be the heist of the decade.”
Some real-life art heists can be elaborate
Some of the most notorious art heists in history involved shenanigans similar to those seen in the movies.
For example, in 1990, two robbers disguised as Boston police officers broke into the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, detained security guards, and made off with 13 pieces of art 81 minutes later. Approximately 2,000 works of art were stolen from the British Museum over a long period of time in 2023 in what was described as an “internal crime.”
But Erin Thompson, a professor who studies art crime at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, said theft is a known risk for museums that struggle to balance security with providing public access to national treasures, especially in older buildings like the Louvre.
She noted that the stolen jewelry was displayed in a gallery with large windows facing a busy street, rather than deep inside the building, where it would be difficult to steal.
“When I say museum security is inadequate, it’s like, ‘Well, what else do we need to do?'” she says. “That’s kind of the danger of the game.”
Jewel heists become more common
Thompson said the Louvre robbery was one of a growing number of robberies targeting jewelry and gold objects, which, unlike famous paintings and sculptures, can be easily dismantled and sold. Experts said the Louvre robbery had many of the hallmarks of these crimes, including fleeing on a motorcycle, entering the premises in broad daylight, and using force.
“This is a pretty standard MO, and we’re seeing more cases like this as jewelry stores tighten up their security,” Thompson said.
In 2019, thieves broke through a barred window at the Grünes Gewerbe Museum in eastern Germany and stole more than 4,300 diamond-containing pieces, worth an estimated $124 million. In the end, most of the gems were recovered.
At least four French museums have been robbed in the past two months, according to media reports including the Paris Museum of Natural History. A Chinese-born woman has been arrested on suspicion of stealing six gold bars worth about $1.75 million from a museum in an attempt to dispose of some of the melted gold, prosecutors said.
In January, robbers used explosives to break into the Dolenz Museum in the Netherlands and stole three golden Kotofenesti bracelets and a golden helmet from the 5th century BC.
But Art Recovery International’s Marinello said smaller museums in Europe were the main targets, making the Louvre robbery “very shocking, very brazen, very bold.” He said the robbery highlights the need for all museums to step up security.
“This is a very important cultural heritage site that could be destroyed forever by some stupid criminal to buy a Lamborghini SUV,” he said. “It has to stop.”
Contributed by: Reuters
