The Louvre heist
I imagine many if not most of you have visited the Louvre, so I’m not telling you anything you don’t know when I say that the place is big. Really, really huge. So it must be quite difficult to secure.
That said, if it’s your job to prevent thefts there, you’ve got to be effective and to be effective you may need to be creative. The thieves certainly were:
In a minutes-long strike Sunday inside the world’s most-visited museum, thieves rode a basket lift up the Louvre ’s facade, forced a window, smashed display cases and fled with priceless Napoleonic jewels, officials said.
The daylight heist about 30 minutes after opening, with visitors already inside, was among the highest-profile museum thefts in living memory and comes as staff complained that crowding and thin staffing are straining security. …
Around 9:30 a.m., several intruders forced a window, cut panes with a disc cutter and went straight for the glass display cases, officials said. Interior Minister Laurent Nunez said the crew entered from outside using a basket lift via the riverfront facade to reach the hall with the 23-item royal collection.
Their target was the gilded Apollon Gallery, where the Crown Diamonds are displayed, including the Regent, the Sancy and the Hortensia.
The thieves smashed two display cases and fled on motorbikes, Nunez said. No one was hurt. Alarms brought Louvre agents to the room, forcing the intruders to bolt, but the theft was already done.
Creative and yet simple, exploiting what was probably a long-existent vulnerability. I have questions that I haven’t seen answered, such as: has anyone ever used this modus operandi before? What sort of alarm system does the museum have? Why is it short-staffed (I assume not enough money), and did this contribute to the time lag in “agents” arriving? Are the agents armed, and if not, how would they be stopping the thieves even had they arrived much earlier?
The head of the Louvre and the head of its security are both women. Are they incompetent DEI hires? Perhaps. But did they jettison previous security measures that would have prevented this theft? Did they fail to follow normal protective measures? I’ve not seen any indications of either, but it might come out with time. That certainly was true with our own Secret Service in Butler, Pennsylvania.
NOTE: This heist immediately made me think of this scene, which made a deep impression on me in 1964:
“I imagine many if not most of you have visited the Louvre”
You might also be imagining this poor ol’ country clergyman is a TV evangelist.;-)
France is outside our budget.
NotTheBee says the heist was historic:
https://notthebee.com/article/historic-louve-museums-first-female-security-chief-hired-by-first-female-director-become-first-women-to-lose-napoleonic-jewels
Topkapi was directed by Jules Dassin, a very interesting blacklisted director. Topkapi is something of a remake of his earlier film Rififi, which I’ve heard is also quite good, though I’ve not seen it.
If alarms brought the guards and the thieves fled on motorbikes, how did the thieves avoid the guards on the way to their bikes? Did they escape via the basket lift too? But the picture shows the lift in the raised position.
I imagine many if not most of you have visited the Louvre
If this was said with intentional irony, it’s brilliant.
But travel to Europe, when the dollar is strong, is cheaper than a lot of folks might think, especially in the slower seasons. The biggest expense would be plane tickets, but (depending on what you want to do) it would probably be cheaper than the same amount of time at Disney World.
As for the Louvre specifically an adult ticket is about $25 right now. I’ve never been there, but I found museums in Italy were very affordable, for example the Doge’s Palace plus nine other Venetian museums is about $25 per person. And so are the churches, which though always free for those worshipping, do sometimes have modestly priced tickets for those wanting to see the art or the architecture. I think the most expensive thing I saw there was the Leaning Tower, which was more like $30, but that included the whole (indescribably beautiful) cathedral complex as well as the vertiginous and claustrophobic climb to the top of the tower.
I kept costs down by going in the winter, planning and booking everything myself, and not renting a car, but I had a good idea of what I wanted to see and did a lot of research first. How well this works would depend on what country it is and what it is you like to do, I suppose, and your energy level if you don’t use a car.
“The head of the Louvre and the head of its security are both women. Are they incompetent DEI hires?”
Yes.
There’s some evidence that suggests the museum head was chosen because she was a woman (mostly some nattering about how too few French museums were headed by women in the French museum specialty press,) and it was explicit at the time of hiring that the security head was chosen because she was a woman, although it’s always possible that the Louvre’s PR people were just taking advantage of her sex.
Which doesn’t mean they were necessarily incompetent as a result but it certainly implies competence wasn’t the number one priority for either. And, of course, the theft itself has implications towards the question, regardless of their supposed qualifications.
Niketas:
Actually, I was thinking of the age of so many of my readers.
For example, I first visited the Louvre in 1963, with a youth tour that was extremely inexpensive.
As for the Louvre heist, strictly speaking “looting” is how a lot of that stuff got there in the first place; elements of what was stolen this week had been stolen more than once in their history. They tend to turn up again, as their historical value is worth more than their value as gold or diamonds or whatever.
I noticed a curious circumlocution in the English-language descriptions of museum exhibits in Venice: “arrived in Venice” which invariably meant “looted”. Venice’s lootings were in turn looted by Napoleon, one of history’s all-time champion looters, though they did get the bronze horses back, which are kept indoors now. When Venice looted them from Constantinople in 1204 they’d had to cut the heads off, which is why they have collars. The horses are so old that no one knows within 500 years how old they are.
I took Neo’s “most of you have been there” at face value, given the image I have of her audience… all fairly well off with the exception of me. I’m just so old it was inevitable.
Been to the Louvre twice – although I was only 16 on the first round. On the second, I was 35ish, and with my daughter (who was about 5) and we only saw about a tenth of the exhibits. My daughter was entranced by the Roman sculpture galleries, and the Fayim portraits … I loved the Impressionist exhibits, and we walked through the David gallery with all of the huuuuuge paintings glorifying Napoleon, wherein the paintings were so large that the close-in figures in them were close to lifesize.
I imagine many if not most of you have visited the Louvre — neo
If this was said with intentional irony, it’s brilliant. — Niketas
Ha! Yes, we’re mostly old at this blog.
I have seen The David, The Pieta, & The Sistine Chapel, but no… I’ve never been to the Louvre.
It’s interesting that the last time I did a longish tour of NYC with my late wife and my brother, we hit several museums. There were some showers that day, but the weather was generally pleasant and sunny when it wasn’t raining. (I do recall that the dollar was low in value relative to the Euro.) But I was amazed that those museums seemed to be flooded with French people. I felt like I had been transported to France with all that flowery verbiage flowing around me.
Old, yes, but I’ve never been further East than Wilkes-Barre.
Other than trips into Canada, I have never left the CONUS.
I have been several times. I intend to go again next week when I am in Paris. And, to see Notre Dame.
I don’t imagine installing a pair of DEI hires (one there four years, one there a year) was helpful in addressing the service deficits at the museum. Hoever, I cannot help but remark that the guards were kept at bay with cutting tools. Why weren’t any of the thieves cured with a dose of lead?
The one time I was in Paris I made it to the Picasso Museum and the wonderful Musée D’Orsay but did not make it to the Louvre.
@TommyJay:Ha! Yes, we’re mostly old at this blog.
Something like 8 million people visit the Louvre each year: it simply doesn’t have the capacity for “most of us” to have visited, even if all 8 million were all Americans of a certain age, even if it were free to go, unless there is some other variable besides our age to explain our likelihood to have gone….
In my case I have to say it was really lack of interest on my part that I didn’t go when I was younger; when I add up the things I used to spend money on that were of no lasting significance, I could certainly have squeezed at least one budget trip to Europe out of it, had I made it a priority, and probably most of us could have at some point. While working through college I had friends no better off than I was who managed to do it.
I think it was at AofSHQ, though possibly Instapundit, that I read that the display cases were originally hardened glass and could be dropped into underfloor safes in case of intrusion but at some point the glass was changed to ordinary display glass and the drop-in mechanisms were removed for reasons not specified.
I’ve been to Paris 4 times and never went to the Louvre. But on ever visit went to my favorites, the Musee D’Orsay, the Musee Rodin and the Musee Cluny.
As to how the thieves got away, there’s video of them descending in the same bucket in which they went up, and then jumping on scooters.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15219157/Astonishing-new-video-shows-Louvre-robbers-calmly-escaping-mechanical-delivery-basket-fleeing-76m-worth-jewels.html
Sharon W, I loved the Musee Cluny.
Yesterday I read an article which contrasted how thieves steal from high end art museums in movies and television (sophisticated high tech, silently slip in and out, very Mission Impossible) versus how these thieves stole from the Louvre (smash and grab, fast getaway, the most high tech part was maybe the ladder or using a glass cutter).
Whether the people in charge of security were DEI hires almost does not matter. There seems to be broad consensus on the interwebs that this should not have happened. Biggest criticism = a maintenance truck pulls up to the museum and no one checked it out?!?
I visited the Louvre in 1979 when we lived overseas, our first family trip to what Brits call the Continent. Might have visited again during a class trip in 1982 mais je ne me souviens pas.
I suspect, without evidence, an “inside job” to one degree or another.
Kate’s DM post ended (literally the final 2 sentences) by validating my comment yesterday (on the Donations thread), about the possible reason for the heist:
“Those stealing historical art pieces are often working to the orders of dealers who will be unable to sell on the black market.
Instead, the jewellery [sic] will be kept hidden, and enjoyed by the master criminal who commissioned the raid.”