In the quiet hours before dawn on the French Riviera, two thieves entered the former home of Pierre-Auguste Renoir and walked out carrying pieces of his legacy worth millions. The theft at the Renoir Museum in Cagnes-sur-Mer is not merely a crime story — it is a symptom of a continent-wide reckoning with how cultural memory is guarded, and by whom. As opportunistic networks grow bolder and institutions grow more vulnerable, Europe finds itself asking an old question in an urgent new register: what does it cost to keep beauty in the world?