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Breaking into the world’s most-visited art institution in broad daylight, taking eight items of invaluable Napoleonic jewellery and disappearing into Paris traffic on simple scooters may seem like the most audacious of crimes, carried out for international notoriety and ensuing movie adaptations.

Experts who observe trends in international art crime, however, see Sunday morning’s robbery at the Louvre as a more practical matter: the most recent in a series of smash-and-grab thefts centered more on the monetary worth of precious stones or materials than the artifacts’ significance, continuing a pattern that has appeared over the last decade in Germany, Britain and the US. The location, they suggest, would have been of secondary concern to the criminals.

“You may ask why thieves who want to steal expensive jewellery are breaking into a globally renowned museum rather than a Cartier store,” said an expert in art recovery. “The answer is simple: it’s because these days a Cartier store is better protected.”

A spate of violent retail store thefts mean that many stores have strengthened their security in the past few years, with security personnel on their locations and merchandise no longer kept on display 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 partly the current economic climate in many western countries.

“Since Covid, governments across the world have cut back on police and the arts funding,” noted Marinello. “If thieves can get into the Louvre, it demonstrates how vulnerable our museums have become. This is a horrible time to be a museum.”

The theft of the objects – featuring jewelry pieces made up of precious stones and 631 diamonds, the crown of Empress Eugénie containing nearly 2,000 diamonds and a extremely expensive diadem once possessed by a royal that the robbers dropped by the roadside on their way out – has inevitably drawn comparisons with the historical theft of the famous painting from the same museum, performed by the Italian handyman the thief.

Better points of reference may be the 2019 burglary of valuables from a German institution worth over millions, the theft of a multi-million pound valuable object from a UK landmark the that year, the recent robbery of a large gold coin from Berlin’s Bode Museum or even a spate of thefts of sports memorabilia from US mining museums.

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

If the artefacts were to stay whole, specialists say, the thieves would find it hard to find a buyer. “It's impossible to trade something as recognizable as the Louvre’s jewels on the licit market”, commented an art crime researcher of the Association for Research into Crimes against Art.

“They would be immediately recognised, especially given the Ministry of Culture has published photos of the pieces. Even a individual buyer or an sales venue would want to see paperwork establishing proper ownership before touching such remarkable pieces.”

In the previous years, museums were often hesitant to go public about the disappearance of well-known works of art and would stay silent out of embarrassment. Now, as cultural robberies are more widely publicised, the storage and selling of taken items is risky business for any lawbreaker.

“Taking a famous painting, it has to remain intact or it becomes worthless, and you have to devise a scheme to conceal it, maybe by passing it around dangerous individuals,” noted Marinello. “And you’re constantly exposed to the risk of an accomplice telling the police to cash in a reward.”

For comparable factors, an art detective said it was vanishingly unlikely that the theft had been ordered. “Commissioned theft is something from films,” he said. “Nobody would touch this. It's global news and in all the media. If you acquire these, if you get caught, you go to jail. You cannot show it to your friends, you cannot bequeath it to your family.”

Modifying taken items by dismantling or re-cutting does reduce the worth. When it comes to gems, it also comes with considerable risk because contemporary methods give stones a bigger and lighter appearance, and older-style stones would either draw unwanted attention or reduce value for a concealment.

Crucially, however, dismantling or re-cutting eliminates the evidence of the crime. “I suspect that the Louvre thieves will try to bring the stolen goods to locations with gem knowledge like Israel, India or even as close as Antwerp, and locate an expert to cut out the stones,” suggested Marinello.

The heist at the Louvre has already brought up concerns about security measures at the institution, with a unauthorized official review expected to be released soon pointing out “considerable” and “ongoing” delays in updating systems and observing that security cameras were lacking in multiple areas. But specialists say displaying valuable objects in historic buildings with a steady stream of visitors comes with dangers that are impossible to remove entirely.

“Older structures are much harder to protect,” explained Erin Thompson. “They often have nice big street-facing 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 most solid security systems for structures should be conceptualised “like a fortress”, said a security advisor. “It should include multiple levels to repel intruders.”

Modern buildings are equipped with state-of-the-art external CCTV cameras or in-built seismic detectors that alert about a smashed window in real time, but historic institutions may be hesitant to uglify their appearance. Detection devices can be hard to install to decorated surfaces. Motion and sound detectors may also have to be turned off during the day as hordes of visitors stomp through a museum.

The schedule of the Louvre raid, which occurred between morning hours local time, was common of recent thefts, Stürmann said. “There’s a good reason why robberies tend to happen at either opening or closing times. It’s often when guards change their shifts and before the museum is full of visitors who actually act as additional security staff.”

Advances in technology may have introduced new gadgets that can raise the alarm more quickly and efficiently, but it has also provided robbers new methods with which to circumvent protections. In the city, the robbers accessed the museum’s upper level with a vehicle-mounted ladder and breached a window with a electric tool.

An author said the discussion in the country about the 232-year-old building had mostly focused on visitor management in recent years, and less on protection.

The museum has an on-site brigade of about 50 full-time firefighters, but their purpose is mainly to protect the artworks 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 political will and funding, and at present the nation lacks sufficient money.”