Five minutes to steal a Renoir: Why museum thefts are becoming bolder across Europe
Museum thefts across Europe are becoming more frequent and aggressive, with recent heists targeting high-profile institutions like the Louvre and the Renoir museum. Experts suggest that successful high-profile robberies are emboldening criminals to target smaller, less secure museums.
Why it matters
The rise in brazen art theft threatens cultural heritage and forces museums to significantly increase security spending and operational costs.
Image source, Reuters/Museum Renoir Image caption, The latest heist, at the Renoir museum in the south of France, saw thieves break in by cutting through a fence with an electric knife and hacksaw
When thieves broke into a French museum earlier this week and stole four paintings by the impressionist artist Pierre-Auguste Renoir, worth millions of euros, not everyone was surprised.
Just last month, the European policing agency (Europol) had warned that museum thefts across Europe were growing increasingly brazen.
And just days before the Renoir heist, internationally known art detective Arthur Brand predicted to the BBC that more high-profile burglaries were likely - particularly in the wake of the successful robbery at the Louvre in Paris last October .
The audacious crime in one of the world's most famous museums stunned France, and the stolen jewellery worth €88m (£75m) has still not been recovered, nearly a year on.
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