Why French Museums Keep Getting Robbed

Summary

The Journal. – Episode Summary

Episode: Why French Museums Keep Getting Robbed
Date: November 17, 2025
Hosts: Jessica Mendoza, Ryan Knutson
Guest: Noemi Becerbe (The Wall Street Journal reporter)

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Overview

This episode explores a recent wave of museum heists sweeping across France, including a brazen broad-daylight robbery at the Louvre. Jessica Mendoza and guest reporter Noemi Becerbe break down why museum thefts are suddenly spiking, what thieves are seeking, how they're pulling it off, and the immense security challenges French museums face—especially outside the world-famous Louvre.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Recent Spate of Robberies

• Headline Heists:
  • In October, thieves used a freight elevator to access the Louvre's Apollo Room, cutting through the glass and escaping with an estimated $102 million in jewels in just seven minutes ([00:05–00:28]).
  • Less than 24 hours later, the Musee de Lumiere de Nisidro in the small town of Langres was robbed of a collection of gold coins ([00:41–01:19]).
  • "Two museum robberies within a day of each other. And it turns out those heists were just the tip of the iceberg." — Jessica Mendoza ([01:32]).
• Broader Pattern:
  • Since September, six French museums were robbed—one hit twice—making seven heists in two months, nine in the past year ([01:41–01:52]).

What Thieves Want — 'Melt Value'

• Targeted Items:
  • Stolen goods are typically gold, coins, and jewelry—not easily traceable art.
  • "What they're looking for is basically stuff that they can sell and you can't art, which is very recognizable...You can melt stuff. You can steal gold, melt it and resell it." — Noemi Becerbe ([04:49–05:23])
• Melt Value Explained:
  • Thieves cut up, melt, or alter valuables to safely resell precious metals and jewels ([05:23]).

Why Now? — Economic and Social Drivers

• Gold Prices:
  • Rising gold and silver prices due to geopolitical anxiety and inflation have made these heists more lucrative ([05:44–05:56]).
• Inspiration from Past Success:
  • The now-famous 2017 Bode Museum heist in Berlin emboldened would-be thieves—demonstrating that with planning, museum security can be breached ([06:15–09:07]).
  • "You've had like these spectacular heists which have allowed this realization, which is that, well, actually these guys can pull it off. Well, maybe we can too." — Noemi Becerbe ([08:41]).

Security Weaknesses in Museums

• Historic Buildings:
  • Many museums are housed in centuries-old palaces and mansions not built for modern security ([09:29–09:44]).
  • Museum security upgrades face complicated regulations and bureaucratic hurdles ([09:44–09:56]).
• Comparisons to Jewelry Stores:
  • "Museums have actually pieces which are much more valuable than any jewelry store. And...it's actually [easier] to rob a museum than to rob a jewelry store, which, unlike museums, has very heavy security." — Noemi Becerbe ([09:11–09:29]).

Government Reaction & Challenges

• The Louvre Responds:
  • The theft was an "eye-opener" for officials. Four suspects have been charged but the jewels are still missing ([11:26–11:59]).
  • The Louvre, with ample resources, will upgrade security; smaller museums struggle to fund improvements ([11:59–12:31]).
• France’s Dilemma:
  • With ~1,200 museums countrywide, France now faces the tough task of deciding which collections to prioritize for protection, delicate since many treasures have deep local or historic significance ([12:31–13:39]).
  • "It's going to be very difficult decision to make for French people, like protecting these museums. It's also about protecting their heritage and passing it on to future generations. And that's very important to French people." — Noemi Becerbe ([13:39]).

Local Impact — The Case of Langres

• The Town’s Treasure:
  • The stolen coins in Langres had sentimental value; half belonged to the city because a local worker uncovered them during renovation ([14:27–15:04]).
  • "People felt like this was sort of the town's treasure, and...it had a very strong sentimental value to people in Langres." — Noemi Becerbe ([15:04–15:38]).
• Security Hurdles:
  • Plans for security upgrades in Langres, like installing a metal shutter, were delayed due to financial constraints ([15:46–16:12]).
• Thieves Still at Large:
  • "No, they have not been. Not been caught yet." — Noemi Becerbe ([16:15–16:19]).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• "Two museum robberies within a day of each other. And it turns out those heists were just the tip of the iceberg."
  — Jessica Mendoza ([01:32])
• "What they're looking for is basically stuff that they can sell...You can melt stuff. You can steal gold, melt it and resell it."
  — Noemi Becerbe ([04:49])
• "You've had like these spectacular heists which have allowed this realization, which is that, well, actually these guys can pull it off. Well, maybe we can too."
  — Noemi Becerbe ([08:41])
• "Museums have actually pieces which are much more valuable than any jewelry store. And what they figured out is that it's actually [easier] to rob a museum than to rob a jewelry store..."
  — Noemi Becerbe ([09:11])
• "It's also about protecting their heritage and passing it on to future generations. And that's very important to French people."
  — Noemi Becerbe ([13:39])
• "People felt like this was sort of the town's treasure, and...it had a very strong sentimental value to people in Langres."
  — Noemi Becerbe ([15:38])
• "No, they have not been. Not been caught yet."
  — Noemi Becerbe ([16:15])

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Louvre Robbery & Immediate Langres Theft: [00:05–01:32]
• Pattern of Heists Across France: [01:41–02:32]
• What Thieves Steal & Why: [04:42–05:23]
• Role of Gold Prices & Copycat Thefts: [05:44–09:07]
• Security Challenges in Museums: [09:29–09:56]
• Government & Louvre Reactions: [11:20–12:31]
• France’s Cultural Dilemma & Local Impact: [12:31–15:38]
• Langres Security Delays & Unsolved Crime: [15:46–16:19]

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Takeaway

France is facing an unprecedented wave of museum thefts targeting "meltable" treasures, spurred by rising gold prices, copycat criminals, and serious challenges upgrading outdated museum security. While the Louvre can afford to respond, hundreds of smaller French museums remain vulnerable—putting both national treasures and local heritage at new risk.

Transcript

[Jessica Mendoza]

Almost exactly a month ago, thieves raided the Louvre museum in Paris and in broad daylight made off with millions of dollars worth of jewels.

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They apparently used a mobile exterior freight elevator, if you will, to get up.

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To the Apollo room.

[Noemi Becerbe]

Two people dressed in workers vests cutting the glass and grabbing the jewels, getting.

[Jessica Mendoza]

Away with an estimated $102 million of jewelry in just seven minutes. While the world's eyes were still on the Louvre, the mayor of a small French town got some surprising news.

[Noemi Becerbe]

She received a call from the director of the local museum, who informed them that the local museum had been robbed too, that a collection of gold coins had disappeared during the night. And the museum is called the Musee de Lumiere de Nisidro. And so it's a museum which is dedicated to this French philosopher. And the museum is really kept by the city.

[Jessica Mendoza]

Lange is a town of roughly 8,000 people about a three and a half hour drive from Paris. The robbery at the museum there, happening so soon after the Louvre heist, hit the local community hard.

[Noemi Becerbe]

The Louvre heist happened on a Sunday morning and that robbery was on the evening of that same Sunday. So just less than 24 hours.

[Jessica Mendoza]

Oh, wow. Basically the same day.

[Noemi Becerbe]

Basically the same day, yeah.

[Jessica Mendoza]

Two museum robberies within a day of each other. And it turns out those heists were just the tip of the iceberg.

[Noemi Becerbe]

Since September, six museums were hit, but one of them was hit twice. So that would make seven. And over the past year it would be nine in France alone.

[Jessica Mendoza]

You heard that right. Nine heists in a single year. Seven of them just in the past two months. Our colleague Noemi Becerbe has been tracking these robberies. And what did you think when you figured out this, when you started seeing this pattern?

[Noemi Becerbe]

I was really surprised actually that, well, it had become so common actually in France because the Louvre gets robbed, everybody's paying attention. But actually it's been happening throughout the year in many places across France and has really started spreading to the rest of Europe. And now in France itself. We've seen this trend pick up over the past year and really accelerate in recent months.

[Jessica Mendoza]

But the question is why? Welcome to the Journal, our show about money, business and power. I'm Jessica Mendoza. It's Monday, November 17th. Coming up on the show, museum heists are on the rise in France.

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[Jessica Mendoza]

So Noemi, you said there have been seven heists in France in the past couple of months. Can you walk me through some of them?

[Noemi Becerbe]

In September, thieves stole from a museum in Limoges, a city in central France. That same month, the Museum of Natural History in central Paris was hit too. Weeks later, the Musee du Desert, which is like a museum in a tiny village in the south of France, was robbed. And that same week, the Jacques Chirac Museum was hit not once but twice on the same week by what prosecutors think are two separate groups of thieves.

[Jessica Mendoza]

Oh my goodness. So I just want to understand, what is it that thieves want from these museums?

[Noemi Becerbe]

Well, what they're looking for is basically stuff that they can sell and you can't art, which is very recognizable. And so that basically rules out paintings and sculptures and so on. But you can melt stuff. You can steal gold, melt it and resell it. You can steal a beautiful diamond necklace, which is very recognizable, but break it into pieces and sell it off quite easily. So that's really what they're looking for. They're looking for melt value.

[Jessica Mendoza]

Melt value. That's the money that thieves can get by melting, cutting or altering the stolen items before selling them. I'm curious. These metals and jewels have always been valuable, and presumably these collections have sort of been sitting at these museums for years. Why are these heists happening now?

[Noemi Becerbe]

Well, I think that one factor is that the price of gold has increased quite significantly, buoyed by anxiety over geopolitics, inflation and the Federal Reserve independence.

[Jessica Mendoza]

Gold and silver prices have both reached all time highs this year, and that's after a major surge over the last decade. But Noemi says another reason heists have taken off is that thieves saw it could be done, and relatively easily. It started in 2017 with a heist at the Bode Museum in Berlin.

[Noemi Becerbe]

This 20 year old member of a Lebanese German crime family called Wisam Remo, he stole a coin known as the Big Maple Leaf, which was valued at more than 3 million euros.

[Jessica Mendoza]

3 million euros? Wow.

[Noemi Becerbe]

Yes, nearly $4 million. They actually hauled the coin on a rollerboard and dropped it out the window. And then they carried it across a bridge in a wheelbarrow.

[Jessica Mendoza]

Okay, hold on. How big is this coin? I was like picturing a coin. Why do you need a wheelbarrow for?

[Noemi Becerbe]

It's massive. It's like. I think that. Yeah, it's 220 pound coin. Oh my. And also made of like, I think it's 99.9, 999% gold, which makes it like a rarity. So it was a pretty spectacular heist.

[Jessica Mendoza]

That's so brazen. And just as a side note, why was it called the Big Maple Leaf?

[Noemi Becerbe]

Because it was forged by the Royal Canadian Mint and so it became known as the Big Maple Leaf.

[Jessica Mendoza]

The heist seemed straight out of the movie Ocean's Eleven. The thieves, led by Wisam Remo, identified a weak spot in the museum, a second floor window that was disconnected from the alarm system. The thieves also had an inside man. According to court documents, an acquaintance of the Remo family had taken a job as a museum guard. And one evening before clocking out, the guard left the window open for Remo's team. And then what did they do? They just cut up this gold coin?

[Noemi Becerbe]

Yeah. So they. Well, they cut the coin in smaller pieces to sell it off.

[Jessica Mendoza]

Okay.

[Noemi Becerbe]

And actually police found like their clothes and car and home sprinkled with this gold dust of extraordinary purity. It was an incredible heist.

[Jessica Mendoza]

Police eventually tracked down Remo and his accomplices. But while awaiting trial, Remo went and pulled off a second, even bigger heist at a different museum. In that case, he made off with 21 pieces of jewelry encrusted with more than 4,300 diamonds, a haul valued at more than 116 million euros. Remo and other family members were convicted of both heists. The group returned some of the stolen jewels as part of a plea bargain. Remo was sentenced to 10 years and nine months in prison for both robberies.

[Noemi Becerbe]

You've had like these spectacular heists which have allowed this realization, which is that, well, actually these guys can pull it off. Well, maybe we can too. That's according to my sources. So it's also like, people get inspired.

[Jessica Mendoza]

By these sets and it's like a copycat situation.

[Noemi Becerbe]

Exactly. It creates copycats. And we've seen that very clearly in France. Like this acceleration.

[Jessica Mendoza]

And why museums versus jewelry stores or other private collections.

[Noemi Becerbe]

Museums have actually pieces which are much more valuable than any jewelry store. And what they figured out is that it's actually to rob a museum than to rob a jewelry store, which, unlike museums, has very heavy security.

[Jessica Mendoza]

Many of Europe's museums are in historic palaces and mansions, places that were built centuries ago to house noble families, not to counter modern security threats. And museums trying to upgrade the security of historic buildings have to go through tons of red tape.

[Noemi Becerbe]

There are very specific rules about what you can do and not do.

[Jessica Mendoza]

Like their facades and stuff like that.

[Noemi Becerbe]

Exactly. You need permits to be able to implement these changes.

[Jessica Mendoza]

In the wake of all these robberies, and especially since the Louvre was hit, museum heists have become a major headache for the French government. What they're doing about it is next.

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[Noemi Becerbe]

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[Jessica Mendoza]

After the Louvre heist, it became clear to French officials that the problem of museum thefts wasn't going away.

[Noemi Becerbe]

I think that this robbery was a real eye opener for everyone and for French authorities. France's most famous museum was robbed in broad daylight by four thieves who entered the museum and made off with $102 million in jewels from the Galerie d'. Apollon.

[Jessica Mendoza]

Preliminary charges have been brought against four people in connection with the Louvre heist. The jewels have not been recovered. The Louvre is now reviewing its security measures and has plans to invest massively in upgrades.

[Noemi Becerbe]

A recent government report has argued that the Louvre has invested a lot of money in acquiring new art and that sometimes that has been at the detriment of the very basic security of these work of art. For the Louvre, it will be very manageable because the Louvre is is a very rich museum. They have the resources to do that. I think that the challenge will really be for other smaller museums which do not have this kind of revenue.

[Jessica Mendoza]

And there are a lot of these smaller museums all throughout France. The country is home to about 1,200 museums, many of which aren't flooded by millions of visitors a year like the Louvre. Instead, they rely on a combination of ticket sales and funding from local government, private donors, and community fundraisers. That means investing in security won't be as simple. So what is the government's plan to address this?

[Noemi Becerbe]

Well, they're still trying to examine all of the art which is out there and the collections which are out there in France and try to build a proper list of national treasures. And from there, they will decide what to do. And we know that's going to be difficult because, well, France's finances are not in great shape right now. France has a massive deficit, and it's struggling to even agree on a budget before the end of the year.

[Jessica Mendoza]

Sounds familiar.

[Noemi Becerbe]

So they are in a difficult spot right now.

[Jessica Mendoza]

And so given that, how does the government decide which museums, which treasures are the priority?

[Noemi Becerbe]

I think that you have to examine, well, their sheer value, but also what they mean to our history. And it's going to be very difficult decision to make for French people, like protecting these museums. It's also about protecting their heritage and passing it on to future generations. And that's very important to French people. And when you have as many museums as you do in France, I think that it's hard to make choices. A lot of people never really thought about these things before these robberies happened and realized how deeply it affected them.

[Jessica Mendoza]

Meanwhile, back in the small town of Langue, residents are dealing with what they see as a huge loss.

[Noemi Becerbe]

These coins had a very special value in people's mind because the history of this treasure is kind of interesting. This museum is relatively recent. It was opened roughly 10 years ago. And actually, when they did the work to renovate this beautiful building and to create the museum inside that building, one of the construction workers found that treasure while doing the renovation work. And the rule is in France that basically, if you find a treasure, half of it is yours.

[Jessica Mendoza]

So half of it keepers?

[Noemi Becerbe]

Yes, half of it. Half of it still. And so this worker got half of the treasure, and the other half went to the city. And that's how it ended up in that museum. But because of this story, people felt like this was sort of the town's treasure, and it had, like, beyond its sheer value, it had, like, a very strong sentimental value to people in Langres.

[Jessica Mendoza]

Given all the problems happening nationally, does that put Long in kind of a tough spot? What are their options?

[Noemi Becerbe]

Well, when I actually spoke to the chief of staff of the mayor, he was saying that they had been discussing now for a while several security improvements, including a metal shutter in front of the main entrance. And while those plans had been delayed essentially for financial reasons. So I can guess that now those changes will be implemented. Maybe a bit too late, but yeah.

[Jessica Mendoza]

Were those thieves ever caught from Long?

[Noemi Becerbe]

No, they have not been. Not been caught yet.

[Jessica Mendoza]

Still on the loose. They're still out there.

[Noemi Becerbe]

They're still out there.

[Jessica Mendoza]

That's all for today. Monday, November 17 Journal is a co production of Spotify and the Wall Street Journal. Additional reporting in this episode by Stacey Miketree and Bertrand Benoit. Thanks for listening. See you tomorrow.