Politicians from the left and right in France have criticised the French government after the Louvre was subjected to a brazen daylight robbery yesterday (19 October).
At 9.30am, when visitors were already streaming into the museum‘s galleries, two masked thieves used a goods lift on a truck parked on the riverbank side of the building to reach a balcony on the first floor. Using two grinders, which they also reportedly threatened museum employees with, the thieves cut through a glazed window leading to the Apollo Gallery of decorative art, smashed two cabinets displaying 19th century royal and imperial jewellery and grabbed ten items, before escaping back down the ladder and fleeing with two accomplices on TMax scooters.
The Paris prosecutor’s office said there were doubts over whether the alarms rang. France’s interior minister Laurent Nunez said that the heist was committed by “experienced professionals” who got in and out of the building in just seven minutes.
“The theft is an attack on a heritage that we cherish because it is our history,” wrote the French president Emmanuel Macron on social media. “We will recover the works and the perpetrators will be brought to justice. Everything is being done everywhere to achieve this.”
The building was evacuated and closed for the day after the incident. According to the French culture ministry, the stolen items include a brooch that belonged to Empress Eugénie, Napoleon III’s wife, fitted with 2,438 diamonds; her diadem, mounted with almost 2,000 diamonds and five large sapphires; and a royal necklace comprising 32 emeralds and 1,138 diamonds, with matching earrings.
The culture minister Rachida Dati told television network TF1 that in their haste to escape the gangsters dropped Eugénie’s crown, which was found broken. The object, surrounded by gold eagles, featured 1,354 diamonds and 56 emeralds.
The prosecutor’s office said that another jewel was found on the floor of the gallery. The thieves also left their tools behind, while jerricans of gasoline were found with the truck, which the perpetrators tried to set alight before they fled. According to the culture ministry, an employee of the Louvre prevented what could have been a disastrous fire.
Nunez announced that France’s police anti-gang brigade would lead the investigation into the robbery, adding that other similar heists had occurred in the past several months, “some led by foreign gangs”.
A crime with precedent
The Louvre robbery on Sunday recalls the 2019 theft of the Green Vault in Dresden, where jewels worth €100m were stolen using a similar modus operandi. Most were later recovered as part of a plea deal. Meanwhile, in France last November, men armed with bats and axes stole seven 18th century snuff-boxes from the Parisian Museum Cognacq-Jay. Police recently announced that five of these precious boxes, which had been lent by the Louvre, the Victoria and Albert Museum‘s Gilbert Collection and the British Royal Collection had been recovered. No other details were given on the investigation and two of the boxes, from the Gilbert Collection and the King’s Collection, are still missing.
Last September, gold nuggets worth €600,000 were stolen from the mineralogy gallery at the Natural History Museum in Paris. In the same month two Chinese dishes from the 14th and 15th centuries and a vase, worth €6.5m, were stolen from a porcelain museum in Limoges. “Museums are vulnerable and they have become targets,” warned Dati in her television interview yesterday.
Eric Ciotti, an ally of Marine Le Pen’s far-right French National Assembly, said of the Louvre theft: “When the state no longer ensures the security of its treasures, the entire nation is threatened”.
Ian Brossat, a senator for the Communist Party, noted that Louvre employees had called a 24-hour wildcat strike last summer in protest against the degradation of security and visiting conditions in the overcrowded museum. “Why were their warnings not heard?” Brossat asked.
Nunez said that “security is the responsibility of each establishment”.
‘Considerable and persistent’ delays
According to Radio France Info, the state auditing body, points in an as yet unpublished report to “considerable and persistent” delays in the ”maintenance of technical installations in the Louvre”, and notes that only one third of the rooms in the museum have security cameras.
Several sources in the museum told The Art Newspaper that staff are having to deal with increasing problems at the museum, including with the video monitoring system. The Confédération française démocratique du travail (CFDT), one of the employees’ unions, calls for an “independent and thorough audit of the Louvre’s security”.
“This theft was a predictable catastrophe,” said Elise Muller, the leader of cultural branch of Union Sud—a French union network—adding that staff had previously raised alarm over “severe failings”. “For the past three years, attention, staff and funds have been diverted from the basic mission of protection of the collections to pay for mundane shows—such as gala dinners, rock concerts, VIP visits, fashion week,” she continued.
A spokesperson for the Confédération Générale du Travail(CGT) said that the organisation’s “first aim is the reinforcement of the staff,” adding that “200 posts have been cut” since 2010. The museum declined to comment.
The Louvre’s director Laurence des Cars, supported by President Macron, recently announced a €1bn plan for a complete renovation of the museum and the opening of an underground complex around the Mona Lisa, however funding has not yet been secured and the unions are now calling for “emergency action”.
The last time the Louvre was robbed was in 1998, when a thief cut a Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot landscape from its frame and walked out with it. The painting has not been recovered.
