Europes smaller museums on guard after Louvre heist, string of thefts

PARMA, Italy, Oct 31 (Reuters) – Two men wearing head torches climbed through a forced-open window at the Fondazione Magnani Rocca museum near Parma on the night of March 22 and calmly lifted artworks by Cézanne, Renoir and Matisse from the walls.Within three minutes, they had passed the works, valued at about €9 million ($10 million), to an accomplice and fled.At the museum’s main gate, a fourth man discharged a fire extinguisher when the alarm sounded, distracting the custodian.“Whatever could go wrong, did,” said Stefano Roffi, director of the private foundation that runs the museum.The raid was one of a string of museum thefts in France, Italy and Spain since last year’s heist at the Louvre in Paris, raising concerns that criminals are increasingly targeting smaller institutions with fewer resources to protect valuable collections.“This is where we see the ‘Louvre effect,'” said Marc Balcells, a Barcelona-based researcher specializing in crimes against cultural heritage.

“If the Louvre was so easy to rob, just imagine a tiny museum in a rural area or a smaller town.”Works by Antonello da Messina vanished from a museum in his Sicilian hometown in August, while two Renoirs were stolen from Cagnes-sur-Mer on the French Riviera the following month.In Spain, thieves stole hundreds of historic gold coins from museums in Badajoz and Albacete and made off with a Bronze Age treasure in Villena, near Alicante.A 2024 survey by France’s Culture Ministry found only one in four cultural institutions had an emergency and risk-prevention plan, while nearly half lacked video surveillance.A French parliamentary report in May said museums lacked the resources and preparation to adequately protect artworks and artifacts.In Italy, the challenge is amplified by the way the country’s cultural heritage is spread across hundreds of towns and institutions, a legacy of centuries of fragmented rule.“That is also what makes our system distinctive: works remain ...