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Breaking into the planet's most popular museum in broad daylight, taking eight items of invaluable historical gems and vanishing into the city traffic on simple scooters may seem like the most audacious of crimes, carried out for international notoriety and subsequent movie adaptations.

Experts who observe patterns in international art crime, however, see the recent heist at the Louvre as a more practical matter: the latest in a series of smash-and-grab thefts centered more on the monetary worth of precious stones or materials than the historical importance, continuing a pattern that has appeared 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 expensive jewellery are entering a globally renowned museum rather than a Cartier store,” said an expert in art recovery. “It's straightforward: it’s because nowadays a high-end boutique is better protected.”

A series of aggressive retail store thefts mean that many stores have beefed up their protection in the past few years, with security personnel on their premises and merchandise no longer kept on display overnight. Museums, on the other hand, look more exposed, partly because of the inherent reason of being accessible institutions in older structures, and partly the financial situation in many developed nations.

“Since Covid, governments across the globe have reduced spending on law enforcement and the arts funding,” noted Marinello. “With criminals entering the Louvre, it shows how vulnerable our museums have become. This is a difficult time to be a museum.”

The theft of the items – featuring necklaces made up of eight sapphires and 631 diamonds, the tiara of Empress Eugénie containing thousands of diamonds and a extremely expensive crown once owned by Napoleon III’s wife that the thieves left by the street on their way out – has inevitably been compared with the historical theft of the Mona Lisa from the same museum, carried out by the Italian handyman the thief.

More relevant comparisons may be the recent burglary of jewellery from a German institution worth over €113m, the theft of a £4.75m valuable object from a UK landmark the same year, the 2017 robbery of a large gold coin from Berlin’s Bode Museum or even a series of robberies of sports memorabilia from American institutions.

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

If the items were to remain intact, specialists say, the thieves would struggle to sell them. “It's impossible to trade something as immediately identifiable 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, especially given the Ministry of Culture has published photos of the items. Even a individual buyer or an auction house would want to see paperwork establishing legal possession before touching such remarkable pieces.”

In the past, museums were often hesitant to go public about the loss of famous works of art and would stay silent out of shame. Now, as art thefts are more widely publicised, the keeping and sale of taken items is risky business for any lawbreaker.

“If you steal a Picasso, it has to remain intact or it becomes worthless, and you have to conceive of a plan to conceal it, perhaps by passing it around dangerous individuals,” noted Marinello. “There's ongoing risk to the danger of an accomplice telling the police to cash in a reward.”

For similar reasons, an art detective said it was highly improbable that the robbery had been ordered. “Stolen to order is something from films,” he said. “No one would handle these items. It's global news and in all the newspapers. If you buy this, if you get caught, you end up in prison. You cannot show it to your acquaintances, you cannot bequeath it to your family.”

Altering taken items by dismantling or reshaping does reduce the worth. When it comes to gems, it also comes with considerable risk because contemporary methods give gems a bigger and brighter appearance, and antique-cut stones would either attract notice or barter the price down for a coverup.

Crucially, however, melting down or re-cutting removes the proof of the crime. “I suspect that the Louvre thieves will try to bring the items to places with gem knowledge like a country, India or even as close as Antwerp, and locate an expert to cut out the gems,” said Marinello.

The robbery at the Louvre has already raised questions about protective steps at the institution, with a unauthorized official review expected to be published next month criticising “significant” and “ongoing” delays in modernizing systems and noting that security cameras were lacking in many rooms. But security experts say showing valuable objects in older structures with a steady stream of visitors comes with risks that are not possible to eliminate completely.

“Older structures are much harder to protect,” explained an art crime professor. “Many of them have large accessible windows that allows for criminals to get away, and there may be preservation laws in place that mean you are unable to install them with proper bulletproof glass.”

The most solid protective measures for buildings should be conceptualised “like a fortress”, noted a security advisor. “It should include several layers to repel attackers.”

Modern buildings are fitted with state-of-the-art external CCTV cameras or in-built seismic detectors that alert about a broken glass in immediately, but old museums may be hesitant to uglify their appearance. Detection devices can be hard to fit to stuccoed ceilings. 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 morning hours local time, was common of recent thefts, Stürmann said. “It's logical why thefts tend to happen at either start or end of day. Frequently when security rotate and prior to the museum is full of visitors who actually act as extra protection.”

Technological progress may have thrown up new gadgets that can notify more rapidly and efficiently, but it has also given thieves new tools with which to bypass protections. In Paris, the thieves reached the museum’s first-floor window with a vehicle-mounted ladder and cut through a window with a electric tool.

An author said the discussion in the country about the historic building had mostly centered on crowd control in the past decade, and less on security.

The institution has an in-house brigade of about fifty full-time emergency personnel, but their purpose is mostly to protect the artworks from blazes and water damage. “There isn't a quick reaction team,” Sciolino said. “In the end, the security of the Louvre all depends on political will and money, and currently the nation lacks sufficient resources.”