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Entering the planet's most popular museum in the middle of the day, grabbing eight items of invaluable historical gems and vanishing into the city traffic on simple scooters may seem like the boldest of crimes, carried out for global fame and ensuing movie adaptations.

Experts who observe trends in global cultural theft, however, see Sunday morning’s heist at the Louvre as a more practical matter: the latest in a series of smash-and-grab thefts centered more on the material value of valuable gems or materials than the artifacts’ significance, continuing a pattern that has emerged over the last ten years in Europe, the UK and the US. The location, they suggest, would have been of lesser importance to the criminals.

“You may ask why criminals who want to steal expensive jewellery are breaking into 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 high-end boutique is more secure.”

A series of violent retail store thefts mean that many outlets have beefed up their protection in recent years, with security personnel on their locations and wares no longer shown overnight. Museums, meanwhile, look more exposed, partly because of the inherent reason of being accessible institutions in historic buildings, and also the current economic climate in many western countries.

“Since Covid, authorities across the world have reduced spending on law enforcement and the arts funding,” said Marinello. “If thieves can get into the Louvre, it shows how vulnerable our institutions have become. This is a difficult time to be a museum.”

The robbery of the objects – featuring jewelry pieces made up of precious stones and hundreds of gems, the crown of a historical figure containing nearly 2,000 diamonds and a hugely valuable diadem once possessed by Napoleon III’s wife that the thieves dropped by the street on their way out – has naturally been compared with the 1911 theft of the famous painting from the Louvre, performed by the worker Vincenzo Peruggia.

More relevant points of reference may be the recent burglary of jewellery from Dresden’s Green Vault Museum worth over millions, the taking of a £4.75m valuable object from Blenheim Palace the that year, the recent robbery of a large gold coin from a European museum or even a spate of robberies of collector items from US mining museums.

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

If the items were to remain intact, specialists say, the thieves would find it hard to sell them. “There’s no way to trade something as recognizable as the Louvre’s jewels on the legal marketplace”, said Lynda Albertson of the Association for Research into Crimes against Art.

“They are too well-known, especially given the cultural authorities has published photos of the items. Even a private collector or an auction house would want to see documentation confirming proper ownership before handling such striking pieces.”

In the previous years, institutions were often reluctant to announce publicly about the loss of famous art pieces and would stay silent out of embarrassment. Now, as cultural robberies are more reported on, the storage and sale of taken items is dangerous for any lawbreaker.

“Taking a famous painting, it has to remain intact or it becomes worthless, and you have to devise a plan to keep it in hiding, perhaps by passing it around difficult criminal actors,” noted Marinello. “There's ongoing risk to the risk of an accomplice telling the police to cash in a ransom.”

For similar reasons, an investigator said it was vanishingly unlikely that the theft had been ordered. “Stolen to order is something from Hollywood movies,” he said. “Nobody would touch this. It’s all around the world and in all the media. If you acquire these, if you get caught, you end up in prison. You cannot show it to your acquaintances, you cannot leave it to your children.”

Altering stolen works by dismantling or reshaping does reduce the worth. When it comes to diamonds, it also comes with considerable risk because modern methods give gems a larger and lighter surface area, and older-style stones would either draw unwanted attention or reduce value for a coverup.

Importantly, however, melting down or reshaping removes the proof of the crime. “I suspect that the Louvre thieves will try to take the stolen goods to locations with gem knowledge like Israel, another nation or even as close as a city, and locate an expert to remove the gems,” said Marinello.

The heist at the Louvre has already brought up concerns about security measures at the museum, with a unauthorized official review expected to be released next month criticising “considerable” and “ongoing” slow progress in modernizing systems and observing that security cameras were missing in multiple areas. But specialists say showing precious items in historic buildings with a steady stream of visitors comes with risks that are impossible to remove entirely.

“Older structures are much harder to secure,” said Erin Thompson. “They often have nice big street-facing windows that makes it easy for thieves to get away, and there may be building protection statutes in place that mean you can’t fit them with proper bulletproof glass.”

The best security systems for buildings should be designed “as a stronghold”, said a security advisor. “It should include multiple levels to repel intruders.”

Contemporary structures are equipped with advanced external CCTV cameras or integrated seismic detectors that alert about a broken glass in real time, but old museums may be hesitant to alter their exteriors. Detection devices can be hard to fit to stuccoed ceilings. Sensors may also have to be turned off during the daytime as hordes of visitors walk through a museum.

The schedule of the Louvre raid, which occurred between morning hours in Paris, was typical of modern robberies, Stürmann said. “There’s a good reason why robberies tend to happen at either opening or closing times. It’s often when security rotate and prior to the museum is crowded who actually act as extra protection.”

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

Elaine Sciolino said the conversation in the country about the historic structure had primarily centered on visitor management in recent years, and not as much on protection.

The museum has an in-house team of about fifty full-time emergency personnel, but their mission is mostly to safeguard the collection from blazes and water damage. “There is no quick reaction team,” Sciolino said. “In the end, the security of the Louvre all comes down to political will and money, and at present France lacks sufficient resources.”