Louvre Museum Jewels Heist – Expert Opinon
This tiara, which once belonged to Empress Eugénie, the wife of Napoleon III, was among eight priceless pieces of jewelry stolen by thieves from the Louvre Museum on October 19. The tiara is part of the museum’s priceless French crown jewels. Photo by Zhang Weiguo/VCG via AP
BU Museum Studies Expert on the Louvre Museum Jewels Heist
Melanie Hall says the crime could lead to tighter security at museums, reopen the debate about limiting crowds for certain exhibitions
What happened October 19 was more than a theft from the Louvre Museum. It was a theft from all of us, says Melanie Hall, director of Boston University’s Museum Studies program.
In one of the most brazen museum heists in history, intruders in Paris broke into the Louvre’s storied Galerie d’Apollon in broad daylight, with visitors in the building, and stole eight pieces of priceless jewelry that are part of the museum’s French Crown Jewels. Brooches, tiaras, necklaces, and earrings containing thousands of diamonds were stolen, as well as sapphires, emeralds, and other precious stones that once belonged to French royalty.
The heist is just the latest in a series of robberies where thieves have targeted not paintings, like in the famous 1990 heist at Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, but precious stones and metals that can be recut or melted down and sold on the black market. With a worldwide manhunt underway, French President Emmanuel Macron vows that the jewels will be recovered and the perpetrators brought to justice.
But the motivation for the robbery remains unclear and the incident has set museums around the world on edge.
BU Today spoke with Hall, a College of Arts & Sciences associate professor of history of art and architecture, about the heist, its possible relation to other museum thefts, and what the loss of these French Crown Jewels represents.
Q&A
With Melanie Hall
BU Today: What might motivate thieves to steal such well-known items, given that the Louvre would have visual records of the stones and that images of the items have been transmitted around the world?
Hall: There are several reasons that are known to prompt thefts from museums. These can range from the opportunistic to a targeted theft, as is clearly the case here. As you point out, given that the images of the stolen objects have been broadcast across the globe, few would be willing to buy the pieces whole.
At first glance, it may appear that jewelry would be particularly attractive for thieves as opposed to art, because it can be disassembled, the individual jewels sold, and any precious metals melted down. But that not only reduces the value considerably, it is also not without high risk for anyone involved in the affair. In fact, the jewelry has different types of value other than monetary.
It is always possible that thefts of this type may be commissioned by a specific black-market collector who simply wants them for a collection. On the black market, such objects have value as collateral in drugs and arms deals.
However, this case is a little different because these jewels have a national heritage value associated not only with the French monarchy, but as items in the Louvre, with the prestige of the French Republic, they are of great sentimental importance to the French nation as status symbols, and quite literally in this case, as symbols of state. Francois Holland, a former French president, is quoted as saying he does not rule out political motives on the part of hostile foreign powers to destabilize France.
Similarly, items of such prestige and national importance as the French crown jewels provide a rare form of collateral that a criminal who had them could use to negotiate a lower sentence if caught. Cumulatively, this makes these particular examples of jewelry more valuable if kept intact. If they are to be disassembled, the police probably have about a week to find them.
BU Today: This heist was part of a wave of what’s being called “commodity theft,” where thieves steal jewels and precious metals, not art. How widespread a problem is this for museums?
There has been a raft of commodities thefts in the past few years that have ranged from cyber heists to thefts from museums. As director of museum studies at BU, I can more easily comment on the museum thefts, of which there have been some recent examples with notable similarities. Law enforcement agencies regularly cooperate across borders in such matters, and police may want to consider whether the Louvre heist is related to the theft from the Drents Museum in Assen, in The Netherlands, in January 2025, when the 2,500-year-old gold Helmet of Cotofenesti (450 BCE), on loan from the National History Museum of Romania, was taken along with three gold bracelets from 50 BCE.
French museums seem to have been particularly targeted this year for thefts in which jewelry and gold nuggets have been taken. Gold has its own attraction, as it can be melted down relatively easily. In Bavaria, Germany, in July 2022, three men received jail sentences for stealing ancient gold coins from the Manching Celtic and Roman Museum. The coins were not recovered, but lumps of gold were found in the possession of one of the thieves.
Perhaps the most unusual theft of a gold commodity came in 2019, when a gold toilet, one of the objects in an exhibition of the Italian conceptual artist Maurizio Cattelan, held at Blenheim Palace, in Oxfordshire, England, was stolen. As in the example of the Louvre heist, this was a quick smash and grab. In this case, the thieves were apprehended and sentenced in June this year, but neither the toilet nor the gold has been recovered.
BU Today: Sunday’s robbery came after years of complaints from Louvre employees that the museum was understaffed and overburdened by huge crowds (an estimated 30,000 a day). Are there steps the Louvre might take to better protect its collections?
Visitor numbers in prestigious museums such as the Louvre have increased with global tourism. Debates about limiting visitor numbers in museums have been aired for years, leading to some extent to stricter entry policies, timed tickets, and limitations on visitor numbers, especially to temporary blockbuster exhibitions. When a museum has particularly well-known or prestigious items, such as the French crown jewels, the objects gain increased value as spectacles. Leonardo’s Mona Lisa, which was stolen from the Louvre in 1911 and recovered two years later, is a prime example, and there are now plans to give the painting its own room subject to an additional charge. It’s possible that the crown jewels heist will prompt increased security and perhaps increased fees and more limited access for specific items or parts of a collection.
However, the thieves entered via a window.
BU Today: The Louvre heist is about more than the monetary value—it’s a huge loss of French culture, yes?
Any theft from a public museum is a theft from us all. Whether or not we are interested in jewelry or the trappings of monarchy and state, we are deprived of the opportunity of encountering items that, until Sunday, were in the public sphere. However, to the French, the loss of the French crown jewels represents the loss of an integral part of their patrimony. Their importance to the French nation is attested by this quote from French President Emmanuel Macron following the heist: “We will recover the works and the perpetrators will be brought to justice.”