Shamita Basu

Four people have since been arrested, but most of the jewels remain missing.

Amid the ongoing search and investigation, there have been major questions about just how easily these thieves got into the museum.

Stacey Mictry is the Paris bureau chief for The Wall Street Journal.

He says that France has been contending with a museum robbery crisis.

Nine different heists have taken place over the past year.

The entire rest of Europe has only seen four in that time, according to the journal.

And Maitreyi said the issue is not that thieves are necessarily outsmarting security with inventive tactics.

In the case of the Louvre, it was a team of people with a truck-mounted lift that was parked outside.

They zoomed up, cut through an exterior window, and walked right in.

all at around 9.30 in the morning during visiting hours.

The issue that France is confronting has to do with the buildings that are housing these highly valued pieces of art.

The Louvre, like many other museums, was once built for and used for different purposes, including as a residence for a noble family, not as a bank or other modern building that's designed to withstand security threats.

And as the French government has been dealing with serious budget deficits for years, the country has found itself unable to pay for meaningful security updates to guard items of high national and cultural value.

Not everyone is sympathetic to that.

Some art critics have pointed out spending on new artwork and ambitious projects was prioritized.

The museum is now belatedly working on security upgrades.

One wider economic trend that might be pushing these heists up is the increasing value of gold.

Several museum robberies in Europe over the last few years have involved collections containing the precious metal because it can be melted down, resold, and is hard to trace.

The crisis has even forced the artistic judgment of the country's president.

The Journal reports that Emmanuel Macron is taking a census of artwork across the country to determine which sites should get security reinforcement.