France’s museums grapple with a wave of smash-and-grab thefts

At a museum in eastern France, two men disguised with wigs used a sledgehammer and a hammer to smash a display case and make off with a 2,500-year-old gold necklace. The heist took under four minutes.

In a smash-and-grab robbery at another French museum, three masked robbers stole 27 pieces of jewelry valued at more than 4.5 million euros ($5.2 million), busting through two doors to break in.

Those thefts took place in July. A few weeks ago, thieves sliced through a fence and climbed through the window of a museum on the French Riviera and fled with two paintings by Pierre-Auguste Renoir. They abandoned two other artworks by the Impressionist master as they made their escape.

The rash of robberies, coming on the heels of last year’s stunning jewel heist in France’s most famous and most visited museum, the Louvre, shows how the country is both blessed and cursed by its troves of treasure accumulated over centuries of conquest, creativity, and having money to spend on art.

France’s passion for paintings, sculptures, ancient artifacts, and other valuables and curios is a source of national pride and identity. Thousands of museums that house collections big and small help transmit France’s love of culture and history from one generation to the next. The biggest also draw millions of tourists who pump money into the French economy.

But keeping all that wealth safe is costly and difficult. Criminals see museums as soft targets. The brazen and agonizing theft of 88 million euros ($102 million) worth of crown jewels from display cases in the Louvre’s Apollo gallery served as a wake-up call. But it was only the most shocking example of broader threats to museums, and not just in France.

European police agency Europol says museum heists are becoming more violent, with sledgehammers, axes, crowbars and even explosives used for break-ins and to smash display cases.

Thieves are also increasingly targeting museum items with gold and other precious metals that can be melted down, and with gemstones that can be removed and sold, the agency said in a report in August. Criminals believe “museum security measures are less robust than those in jewelry stores,” it said.

This article was provided by The Associated Press.