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Breaking into the planet's most popular art institution in broad daylight, grabbing eight items of invaluable Napoleonic jewellery and vanishing into Paris traffic on humble scooters may seem like the most audacious of crimes, carried out for international notoriety and subsequent Hollywood film treatments.

Specialists who observe trends in international art crime, however, see the recent heist at the Louvre as something more prosaic: the most recent in a series of smash-and-grab thefts focused more on the monetary worth of valuable gems or materials than the artifacts’ significance, perpetuating a pattern that has emerged over the last decade in Europe, Britain and the US. The venue, they propose, would have been of secondary concern to the criminals.

“You may ask why thieves who want to steal valuable jewellery are entering a world-famous museum rather than a luxury jewelry store,” stated an expert in art recovery. “The answer is simple: it’s because nowadays a Cartier store is better protected.”

A spate of violent jewellery shop thefts indicate that many outlets have strengthened their protection in the past few years, with armed guards on their locations and merchandise no longer kept on display overnight. Museums, meanwhile, look more exposed, in part because of the inherent reason of being public-facing institutions in historic buildings, and partly the financial situation in many western countries.

“Since Covid, authorities across the globe have cut back on police and the culture sector,” noted Marinello. “If thieves can get into the Louvre, it demonstrates how vulnerable our museums have become. This is a difficult time to be a museum.”

The robbery of the items – featuring jewelry pieces made up of eight sapphires and 631 diamonds, the tiara of Empress Eugénie featuring thousands of diamonds and a extremely expensive diadem once possessed by Napoleon III’s wife that the thieves left by the street on their way out – has naturally drawn comparisons with the historical theft of the famous painting from the same museum, performed by the worker the thief.

Better comparisons may be the recent burglary of valuables from Dresden’s Green Vault Museum worth over millions, the theft of a £4.75m valuable object from a UK landmark the that year, the 2017 robbery of a large gold coin from a European museum or even a series of robberies of sports memorabilia from US mining museums.

“It's a clear trend here,” explained Marinello. “Break in, take items, and dismantle them as rapidly as possible.”

If the artefacts were to remain intact, experts say, the criminals would struggle to find a buyer. “It's impossible to sell something as immediately identifiable as the museum's gems on the legal marketplace”, said Lynda Albertson of the Association for Research into Crimes against Art.

“They are too well-known, particularly given the Ministry of Culture has released images of the items. Even a individual buyer or an auction house would want to see documentation establishing legal possession before touching such remarkable pieces.”

In the past, museums were often hesitant to announce publicly about the loss of famous works of art and would stay silent out of embarrassment. These days, as cultural robberies are more reported on, the keeping and sale of taken items is dangerous for any criminal.

“If you steal a Picasso, it has to stay complete or it becomes valueless, and you have to devise a scheme to keep it in hiding, maybe by moving it among dangerous individuals,” said Marinello. “There's ongoing risk to the danger of an accomplice telling the police to collect a ransom.”

For comparable factors, an art detective said it was highly improbable that the theft had been commissioned. “Commissioned theft is something from films,” he said. “No one would handle these items. It's global news and in all the media. If you buy this, if you get caught, you end up in prison. You cannot show it to your friends, you cannot bequeath it to your children.”

Modifying taken items by melting down or reshaping does reduce the value. When it comes to gems, it also comes with considerable risk because modern cutting techniques give gems a larger and brighter surface area, and antique-cut stones would either attract notice or barter the price down for a concealment.

Importantly, however, melting down or reshaping eliminates the proof of the theft. “I suspect that the Louvre thieves will try to bring the items to locations with gem knowledge like a country, another nation or even as close as a city, and locate an expert to remove the stones,” suggested Marinello.

The heist at the Louvre has already brought up concerns about security measures at the institution, with a leaked official review expected to be released soon pointing out “considerable” and “persistent” delays in modernizing equipment and noting that surveillance were lacking in multiple areas. But specialists say showing valuable objects in older structures with a constant flow of guests comes with risks that are impossible to remove entirely.

“Older structures are more difficult to secure,” explained Erin Thompson. “Many of them have large accessible windows that makes it easy for thieves to escape, and there may be building protection statutes in place that mean you can’t fit them with secure windows.”

The best protective measures for buildings should be designed “as a stronghold”, said a security advisor. “There should be multiple levels to repel intruders.”

Contemporary structures are equipped with state-of-the-art surveillance systems or in-built seismic detectors that raise alarm about a smashed window in real time, but historic institutions may be reluctant to uglify their appearance. Laser scanners can be difficult to fit to decorated surfaces. Motion and sound detectors may also have to be turned off during the daytime as hordes of visitors stomp through a museum.

The timing of the robbery, which took place between 9.30am and 9.40am local time, was common of modern robberies, Stürmann said. “There’s a good reason why robberies tend to happen at either opening or closing times. Frequently when guards rotate and prior to the museum is full of visitors who effectively act as extra protection.”

Technological progress may have thrown up new gadgets that can raise the alarm more quickly and effectively, but it has also given robbers new tools with which to circumvent protections. In Paris, the robbers reached the museum’s upper level with a vehicle-mounted ladder and cut through a glass pane with a battery-powered disc cutter.

Elaine Sciolino said the conversation in France about the historic structure had primarily centered on crowd control in the past decade, and less on security.

The museum has an on-site brigade of about 50 full-time emergency personnel, but their purpose is mostly to protect the collection from blazes and water damage. “There is no rapid-response unit,” Sciolino said. “In the end, the security of the Louvre all comes down to government support and money, and currently France lacks sufficient resources.”