Two men wearing headlamps entered through a window at the Fondazione Magnani Rocca museum, near Parma, on the night of March 22, and, with complete calm, removed works of art by Cézanne, Renoir and Matisse from the walls.
In three minutes, they handed the works, valued at about 9 million euros, to an accomplice and fled. At the museum’s main gate, a fourth man activated a fire extinguisher when the alarm sounded, distracting the custodian.
“Everything that could go wrong did,” said Stefano Roffi, director of the private foundation that runs the museum.
The robbery was part of a series of museum thefts in France, Italy and Spain since last year’s Louvre heist in Paris, which raises 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 steal from, imagine a tiny museum in a rural area or in a smaller town.”
Works by Antonello da Messina disappeared from a museum in his hometown in Sicily in August, while two Renoir paintings 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 took a Bronze Age treasury in Villena, near Alicante.
A 2024 survey conducted by the French Ministry of Culture found that only one in four cultural institutions had an emergency and risk prevention plan, while nearly half did not have CCTV surveillance.
When the alarm goes off
A French Parliament report released in May stated that museums lacked resources and preparedness to adequately protect artworks and artifacts.
In Italy, the challenge is compounded by the way the country’s cultural heritage is spread across hundreds of towns and institutions, a legacy of centuries of fragmented rule.
“It is also what makes our system unique: the works stay where they were created,” said Antonella Pinna, president of the Italian committee of the International Council of Museums. “But we need to make life harder for criminals.”
The council worked with Italy’s Ministry of Culture and the Carabinieri on museum security guidelines published in 2015, but Pinna said technology alone is not enough.
“If an alarm goes off, someone needs to ensure it is checked,” she said.
On a narrow street in the Tuscan town of Sansepolcro, the municipal museum displays four works by the Renaissance master Piero della Francesca, born just steps away there in the 15th century.
The Louvre theft “affected us deeply because cultural heritage is fundamental to Sansepolcro’s identity. It is our soul,” said the city’s Culture Councillor, Francesca Mercati, to Reuters.
After the Louvre theft, agents from the Carabinieri’s cultural heritage protection unit recommended more cameras, longer retention times for CCTV footage and tighter controls on bags and bulky clothing.
“We implemented these recommendations immediately,” Mercati said.
Protection Network
The scale of the challenge is daunting.
Italy has more than 4,400 museums and similar institutions, according to the national statistics agency ISTAT. Spain has about 1,500 museums, while France has more than 1,200 institutions officially designated as “Musées de France,” in addition to hundreds of smaller collections.
Protecting such an extensive network is particularly difficult for smaller institutions that rely on local funding.
Florence Imbert, a security consultant for cultural institutions based in Paris, said that 85% of small French museums are run by local authorities with limited financial resources.
“The budget is essential to win the war,” she said.
The French Ministry of Culture announced in July a 33-point security plan, backed by 30 million euros over three years for local museums.
Recent numbers suggest the concern is justified. The Carabinieri’s art squad registered 17 robberies at Italian museums and galleries in 2025, up from 14 the year before.
Europol stated in an August report that robberies at museums were becoming more violent and increasingly aimed at precious metals, gemstones and other high-value artifacts.
Fast Gain?
Unlike gold or jewels, which can be dismantled or melted, a famous painting is difficult to turn into quick cash.
Famous works, such as Renoir’s, are rarely sold openly, Pinna said. Instead, it is more likely that stolen artworks are hidden, used as barter in ransom attempts or offered in private transactions.
Even when works are recovered, museums can incur significant costs related to investigations, recovery efforts and strengthening security.
The recent robberies have also reignited the debate about insurance.
Most major state-supported museums in Western Europe rely on government indemnity schemes rather than commercial coverage, but some institutions have begun reassessing the risks, said Filippo Guerrini-Maraldi, a specialist in private art and heritage insurance at the Howden Specialty brokerage.
“And, for the first time, actually, in my 40 years of career, I see art theft becoming an increasingly grave risk. It has always been a lesser risk,” he said.
Insurers are also turning to technology. Beazley is exploring how artificial intelligence can be used to analyze CCTV images to identify suspicious behavior in museums and galleries, helping security teams detect threats faster, said the underwriting director for Beazley’s art insurance Dishni Mahendran.
Security vs. Access
For museum directors and cultural authorities, the challenge is how to strengthen security without isolating the collections from local communities or harming the visitor experience.
“Ultimately, museums must remain easily accessible,” Imbert said. “People should be able to enter without having to go through 50 security checks.”
Julien Volper, curator of the Africa Museum in Belgium, said that particularly vulnerable treasures should only be displayed when adequate security measures are in place.
“I’m not saying this is the definitive solution, but it seems better than displaying replicas,” he said. “We’re not in Disneyland.”
In August, the Carabinieri recovered the three works stolen from Parma’s museum from a cardboard box hidden in an apartment. Five Moldovan citizens were arrested in connection with the theft.
Investigators said wiretaps indicated that the suspects had attempted, unsuccessfully, to find buyers in Eastern Europe and Russia.
Since then, the works have returned to the museum in what Roffi called a “welcome party.”
“The theft triggered a wave of solidarity in Italy and abroad,” he said. The museum now has 24-hour surveillance, funded by a local consortium of cheese producers.
“The case was not simply seen as a theft of a museum, but as an attack on art as shared cultural heritage.”
