Five minutes to steal a Renoir: Why museum thefts are becoming bolder across Europe

**Five minutes to steal a Renoir: Why museum thefts are becoming bolder across Europe**

The latest robbery, at the Renoir museum in southern France, involved thieves cutting through a fence with an electric knife and hacksaw to get inside.

When thieves broke into a French museum earlier this week and took four paintings by impressionist artist Pierre-Auguste Renoir, worth millions of euros, the news did not come as a shock to everyone.

Only last month, the European policing agency Europol had cautioned that museum thefts across Europe were becoming ever more brazen.

And just days before the Renoir theft, well-known art detective Arthur Brand told the BBC that more headline-grabbing burglaries were likely — especially after the successful robbery at the Louvre in Paris last October.

The daring crime at one of the world’s most famous museums shocked France, and the stolen jewellery, valued at €88m (£75m), has still not been recovered nearly a year later.

“We will see more of this,” Brand says, “because if you are able to hit the Louvre, thieves all around the world are watching that, thinking, ‘Wow’ - and then they think, ‘Don’t we have a local museum with gold and silver?’”.

Within hours of the Louvre burglary, thieves had stolen coins from a smaller museum in France. Since then, criminals have taken a diamond necklace in Vienna, Bronze Age artefacts in Spain, and art from two Italian museums — and that is only what the BBC has reported on.

The theft at the Renoir Museum in Cagnes-sur-Mer is the latest, and investigators are still trying to locate the remaining multi-million-pound paintings, two of which were quickly recovered after the thieves dropped them in the museum garden.

Europol told the BBC that the number of museum theft cases reported to it across Europe began rising about two years ago.

Its latest report says both the methods and the targets are changing, with more forceful tactics and, as in the Louvre case, a greater focus on high-value items such as precious metals and gemstones.

Both Brand and Ibrahim Bulut, a museum security expert at a Belgian security consulting firm, think many of the thefts that followed the Louvre burglary are copycats.

“Every museum in the world is stressing now,” Brand says. “In every museum there have been meetings with the security officer or with the police.”

The Association for Research into Crimes against Art (ARCA) says the recent thefts show “a repeated preference for small, portable, immediately accessible objects and for attacks designed to be completed in minutes”.

Data supplied to the BBC by ARCA shows recorded museum thefts in France jumped in 2024, then rose slightly again in 2025.

Even so, the figures fluctuate over time, with more thefts recorded in 2015 than a decade later.

Art detective Brand helped recover this Vincent van Gogh painting, stolen in 2023 and eventually handed to him by an unknown man.

These crimes threaten what many see as priceless objects of historical and cultural importance enjoyed by the public — though some argue they are stealing “from the rich, who cares?” Brand says.

Others note the colonial history behind many treasures in European museums, with art historians pointing out that the French crown jewels stolen from the Louvre included emeralds, diamonds, sapphires and pearls that are not native to France.

Museums are vulnerable and easy to rob, Brand says, compared with well-protected jewellery shops and banks, which nowadays hold less cash.

Historically, directors “never have enough money for security” or would rather spend it on the next exhibition, and museums are often located in old buildings that are hard to safeguard, he adds.

For instance, the Denis Diderot Maison des Lumières (House of Enlightenment) — burgled hours after the Louvre — is housed in two 18th-century mansions in Langres.

“We therefore have to reconcile modern security requirements with the need to preserve historic buildings and comply with France’s heritage regulations,” local mayor Théo Caviezel says.

Museums are also open public spaces with less access control, and offenders can enter as visitors, says Kumar Sokka, CEO of Acre Security, which works with some museums in Europe.

And even when a museum is well secured, thieves may still arrive armed, Brand says, adding that placing police in galleries would be impractical.

Many of these burglaries are over in minutes, and the thieves are long gone by the time police arrive — the Renoir case took just five minutes.

Heists once relied on deception, but burglaries are now becoming more violent.

Offenders are using tools such as sledgehammers, axes, crowbars and, in some cases, explosives to break in.

At the Louvre, the thieves used a mechanical lift to reach the building, cut through the window with power tools and then threatened guards, who left, before forcing their way into displays and taking the jewels. In the Renoir case, the perpetrators used an electric knife to cut through a fence before sawing through the structures holding the paintings’ frames in place.

The growing aggression brings fresh security worries.

“An armed incident during opening hours, like the one we experienced, creates a situation in which the immediate priority is to keep our audience and staff safe,” says Lilli Hollein, director of the Museum of Applied Arts (MAK) in Vienna, which was burgled last month.

What is being stolen is changing too. Paintings are still taken, but they are harder to sell, so about 10 years ago thieves began moving toward goods that are easier to dispose of, Brand says.

Now precious metals, gemstones and culturally significant artefacts, including Chinese porcelain, are increasingly targeted, according to Europol’s report.

“Precious metals can be easily melted down, leaving no trace for law enforcement, and facilitating illicit sales during the fencing process,” it says. “Precious stones in jewellery, on the other hand, can be easily removed and sold further.”

Chinese porcelain, meanwhile, is likely to be easy to sell on the art market because demand is high, Europol says.

After a theft, police usually have four to six days to catch the thieves, according to Brand, who assists investigators by contacting informants and receiving tips from the public or even ex-partners of offenders.

Suspects may be arrested, but jewels or precious metals may never be found — as in the Louvre case.

By contrast, Brand believes the Renoir paintings stolen this week — two of which were dropped by the thieves on the way out — “will probably be recovered” because “no one will want to buy” them and “it is likely, then, that the thieves have no idea what to do with them”.

Christopher A. Marinello, head of Art Recovery International, which recovers stolen art, says only 5-10% of stolen art is ever recovered, making thefts from small museums like this week’s “extra painful”.

Tuesday’s heist is another example of “Europe’s museums under siege”, he adds.

After its October theft, Maison des Lumières carried out a security audit led by police officers appointed by France’s cultural ministry, mayor Caviezel says.

Some recommendations are already being put into practice, including improved video surveillance, while other structural upgrades are still being developed.

MAK in Vienna also stepped up security to prevent “copycat offenders and to provide our audience with visible security”, its director says. Entry is through a metal detector, bags must be left in the cloakroom or lockers, and there are more security guards.

Experts say the key is to build physical barriers that slow thieves down long enough for police to arrive, or to make a theft take so long that it discourages would-be offenders.

“Security is about buying time”, says Bulut. “The objective is not to make the theft theoretically impossible, but to make removal difficult, noisy, detectable and above all, time-consuming, because to be very honest, thefts can always happen, it’s the timing that you’re concerned about.”

Brand says a delay could mean adding an extra heavy door anchored into the ground, thickening display-case glass or using a fog machine.

Sokka says integrated systems are essential — so, for example, if an alarm sounds, the facility could be shut down, or all high net worth paintings could be locked down.

But security is costly. Mayor Caviezel, whose small French city is home to two museums and collections, says raising the money is “one of our main challenges”.

“A small city can be entrusted with collections of national importance without having the financial resources of a major Parisian institution.”

Bulut, who sits on the board of the International Committee for Museum Security, says it is not only about expensive equipment. It can also mean training guards to notice suspicious people who may be scouting a museum and asking whether they need help, which may discourage them from coming back.

Museums are investing: Sokka says his company has seen a rise in seismic offerings, which can detect vibrations such as drilling in walls, over the past 18 months.

Museum thefts are not rising everywhere in Europe. In Sweden, major museum robberies began to fall around a decade ago and have not changed much in recent years, said Peg Magnusson, Sweden’s representative for a UNESCO convention against the illicit trafficking of cultural property. However, other troubling targets for cultural artefacts have appeared.

The challenge for museums now is to strengthen security while remaining open to the public.

“A museum cannot be a fortress,” Hollein says. “We want to be open institutions; at the same time, we are facing new challenges and attacks against museums that will require new standards.”