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Breaking into the world’s most-visited museum in broad daylight, grabbing eight items of invaluable historical gems and disappearing into the city traffic on humble scooters may seem like the boldest of crimes, executed for global fame and subsequent movie adaptations.

Specialists who study patterns in global cultural theft, however, see Sunday morning’s heist at the Louvre as a more practical matter: the latest in a string of quick-hit thefts focused more on the material value of valuable gems or materials than the artifacts’ significance, perpetuating a trend that has emerged over the last ten years in Germany, Britain and the US. The location, they propose, would have been of secondary concern to the thieves.

“One might wonder why thieves who want to steal expensive jewellery are breaking into a world-famous museum rather than a luxury jewelry store,” said an expert in art recovery. “It's straightforward: it’s because nowadays a Cartier store is more secure.”

A series of aggressive jewellery shop thefts indicate that many outlets have beefed up their security in the past few years, with armed guards on their locations and merchandise no longer shown overnight. Cultural institutions, on the other hand, look more exposed, in part because of the in-built reason of being public-facing institutions in historic buildings, and also the financial situation in many western countries.

“After the pandemic, governments across the globe have reduced spending on police and the culture sector,” said Marinello. “With criminals entering the Louvre, it shows how vulnerable our museums have become. This is a horrible time to be a museum.”

The theft of the items – featuring necklaces made up of precious stones and hundreds of gems, the crown of a historical figure featuring nearly 2,000 diamonds and a hugely valuable crown once possessed by a royal 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 Louvre, carried out by the Italian handyman the thief.

More relevant comparisons may be the 2019 burglary of valuables from a German institution worth over €113m, the theft of a multi-million pound gold toilet from a UK landmark the same year, the recent robbery of a large gold coin from a European museum or even a spate of thefts of sports memorabilia from US mining museums.

“There’s a simple pattern here,” explained Marinello. “Smash, grab, and melt it down as rapidly as possible.”

If the items were to remain intact, experts say, the criminals would struggle to sell them. “It's impossible to trade something as recognizable as the Louvre’s jewels on the licit market”, said an art crime researcher of the Association for Research into Crimes against Art.

“They are too well-known, particularly given the cultural authorities has released images of the pieces. Even a individual buyer or an sales venue would want to see paperwork confirming proper ownership before handling such remarkable pieces.”

In the previous years, institutions were often hesitant to announce publicly about the loss of famous art pieces and would stay silent out of embarrassment. These days, as art thefts are more widely publicised, the storage and selling of stolen art is risky business for any lawbreaker.

“Taking a Picasso, it has to stay complete or it becomes valueless, and you have to conceive of a scheme to keep it in hiding, perhaps by moving it among difficult criminal actors,” noted Marinello. “And you’re constantly exposed to the risk of an accomplice telling the police to collect a ransom.”

For comparable factors, an investigator said it was vanishingly unlikely that the robbery had been commissioned. “Commissioned theft is something from films,” he said. “No one would handle these items. It’s all around the world and in all the media. If you acquire these, if you are apprehended, you go to jail. You cannot show it to your acquaintances, you cannot leave it to your family.”

Altering taken items by dismantling or re-cutting does reduce the value. When it comes to gems, it also comes with significant danger because contemporary cutting techniques give gems a bigger and lighter surface area, and older-style stones would either attract notice or reduce value for a concealment.

Crucially, however, dismantling or reshaping eliminates the proof of the theft. “My guess is that the Louvre thieves will try to bring the stolen goods to places with diamond expertise like Israel, India or even as nearby as a city, and find someone to remove the stones,” suggested Marinello.

The robbery at the Louvre has already brought up concerns about security measures at the museum, with a unauthorized state auditor report expected to be released soon criticising “considerable” and “persistent” delays in modernizing equipment and noting that security cameras were lacking in many rooms. But security experts say displaying valuable objects in older structures with a constant flow of guests comes with risks that are not possible to eliminate completely.

“Older structures are much harder to protect,” explained Erin Thompson. “They often have large accessible 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 “like a fortress”, said a security advisor. “There should be multiple levels to deter attackers.”

Contemporary structures are fitted with state-of-the-art surveillance systems or in-built vibration sensors that alert about a broken glass in immediately, but old museums may be hesitant to uglify their exteriors. Laser scanners can be hard to fit to stuccoed ceilings. Motion and sound detectors may also have to be turned off during the daytime as crowds stomp through a museum.

The schedule of the Louvre raid, which took place between morning hours in Paris, was common of modern robberies, Stürmann said. “There’s a good reason why robberies tend to happen at either start or end of day. Frequently when guards change their shifts and prior to the museum is full of visitors who actually act as extra protection.”

Advances in technology may have thrown up new devices that can raise the alarm more rapidly and efficiently, but it has also given robbers new methods with which to circumvent security measures. In the city, the thieves reached the museum’s upper level with a mobile equipment and breached a glass pane with a battery-powered disc cutter.

An author said the conversation in the country about the 232-year-old building had primarily focused on crowd control in recent years, and not as much on protection.

The institution has an in-house brigade of about fifty permanent firefighters, but their mission is mostly to protect the collection from blazes and water damage. “There is no quick reaction team,” Sciolino said. “In the end, the safety of the Louvre all depends on political will and funding, and currently France simply has no resources.”