By Giselda Vagnoni, Gabriel Stargardter, Javi West Larrañaga and Jemima Denham
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 specialising 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.
WHO CHECKS WHEN THE ALARM GOES OFF?
A French parliamentary report in May said museums lacked the resources and preparation to adequately protect artworks and artefacts.
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 in the places 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 Culture Ministry and the Carabinieri on museum security guidelines published in 2015, but Pinna said technology alone was not enough.
"If an alarm goes off, someone has to make sure it is checked," she said.
In a narrow street in the Tuscan town of Sansepolcro, the civic museum displays four works by Renaissance master Piero della Francesca, born just steps away in the 15th century.
The Louvre theft "affected us deeply because cultural heritage is central to Sansepolcro's identity. It is our soul," culture councillor Francesca Mercati told Reuters.
After the Louvre raid, officers from the Carabinieri's cultural heritage protection unit recommended more cameras, longer retention of CCTV footage and tighter controls on bags and bulky clothing.
"We immediately implemented those recommendations," Mercati said.
A VAST NETWORK TO PROTECT
The scale of the challenge is daunting.
Italy has more than 4,400 museums and similar institutions, according to national statistics agency ISTAT. Spain has about 1,500 museums, while France has more than 1,200 institutions carrying the official "Musees de France" designation, alongside hundreds of smaller collections.
Protecting such a broad network is particularly difficult for smaller institutions that depend on local funding.
Florence Imbert, a Paris-based security consultant for cultural institutions, said 85% of small French museums were run by local authorities with limited financial resources.
"The budget is key to winning the war," she said.
France's Culture Ministry announced a 33-point security plan in July, backed by €30 million over three years for local museums.
Recent figures suggest concern is warranted. The Carabinieri art squad recorded 17 thefts from Italian museums and galleries in 2025, up from 14 a year earlier.
Europol said in an August report that museum thefts were becoming more forceful and increasingly focused on precious metals, gemstones and other high-value artefacts.
A FAST BUCK?
Unlike gold or jewellery, which can be broken up or melted down, a well-known painting is difficult to turn into quick cash.
Celebrated works such as those by Renoir can rarely be sold openly, Pinna said. Instead, stolen art is more likely to be hidden, used as leverage in ransom attempts or offered privately.
Even when works are recovered, museums can face significant costs linked to investigations, recovery efforts and upgraded security.
The recent thefts have also reignited debate about insurance.
Most major state-backed museums in Western Europe rely on government indemnity schemes rather than commercial cover, but some institutions have begun reassessing the risks, said Filippo Guerrini-Maraldi, a private wealth and fine art insurance specialist at broker Howden Specialty.
"And for the first time, really, in my 40-year career, I've seen art theft now becoming more of a major, major risk. It was always the minor risk," he said.
Insurers are also turning to technology. Beazley is exploring how AI can be used to analyse CCTV footage to identify suspicious behaviour in museums and galleries, helping security staff spot threats sooner, said fine art underwriter Dishni Mahendran.
SECURITY VS ACCESS
For museum directors and cultural officials, the challenge is how to tighten security without cutting collections off from local communities or diminishing the visitor experience.
"Ultimately, museums must remain easy to access," Imbert said. "People should be able to enter without having to pass through 50 security checks."
Julien Volper, a conservator at Belgium's Africa Museum, said particularly vulnerable treasures should only be displayed when adequate security measures are in place.
"I'm not saying that's the ultimate solution, but it seems better than displaying replicas," he said. "We're not at Disneyland."
In August, the Carabinieri recovered the three artworks stolen from the Parma museum from a cardboard box hidden in an apartment. Five Moldovan nationals were arrested in connection with the theft.
Investigators said wiretaps indicated the suspects had unsuccessfully tried to find buyers in Eastern Europe and Russia.
The works have since returned to the museum in what Roffi called a "homecoming party".
"The theft triggered an outpouring of solidarity in Italy and abroad," he said. The museum now has round-the-clock guards funded by a local cheese consortium.
"It was seen not simply as a theft from a museum, but as an attack on art as a shared cultural heritage."
(Reporting by Giselda Vagnoni in Rome, Gabriel Startgardter in Paris, Javi West Larrañaga in Gdansk, Jemima Denham in London; Additional reporting by Alex Fraser in Parma; Bart Biesemans in Brussels; Writing by Giselda Vagnoni; Editing by Ros Russell)
