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

Specialists who study patterns in global cultural theft, however, see Sunday morning’s robbery at the Louvre as something more prosaic: the most recent in a string of quick-hit thefts centered more on the monetary worth of valuable gems or materials than the historical importance, continuing a trend that has appeared over the last decade in Europe, the UK and the US. The location, they suggest, would have been of lesser importance to the thieves.

“One might wonder 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 nowadays a Cartier store is better protected.”

A series of violent retail store thefts mean that many outlets have beefed up their security in recent 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 in-built factor of being public-facing institutions in historic buildings, and partly the financial situation in many developed nations.

“Since Covid, authorities across the globe have cut back on police and the culture sector,” said Marinello. “With criminals entering the Louvre, it demonstrates how at risk our museums have become. This is a horrible time to be a museum.”

The robbery of the objects – including jewelry pieces made up of precious stones and 631 diamonds, the crown of Empress Eugénie containing thousands of diamonds and a extremely expensive crown once owned by Napoleon III’s wife that the robbers dropped by the roadside on their way out – has inevitably drawn comparisons with the 1911 theft of the famous painting from the Louvre, carried out by the worker Vincenzo Peruggia.

Better comparisons may be the 2019 theft of jewellery from Dresden’s Green Vault Museum worth over millions, the taking of a multi-million pound gold toilet from Blenheim Palace the that year, the recent heist of a valuable item from Berlin’s Bode Museum or even a series of thefts of collector items 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 stay whole, experts say, the criminals would find it hard to sell them. “There’s no way to sell 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 would be immediately recognised, particularly given the Ministry of Culture has released images of the items. Even a individual buyer or an auction house would want to see paperwork confirming proper ownership before handling such remarkable pieces.”

In the past, institutions were often hesitant to announce publicly about the disappearance of well-known works of art and would stay silent out of shame. Now, as art thefts are more widely publicised, the storage and selling of stolen art is risky business for any criminal.

“If you steal a famous painting, it has to remain intact or it becomes valueless, and you have to devise a plan to keep it in hiding, maybe by moving it among dangerous individuals,” noted Marinello. “And you’re constantly exposed to the risk of an accomplice telling the police to collect a ransom.”

For similar reasons, an investigator said it was highly improbable that the theft had been commissioned. “Stolen to order is something from films,” he said. “Nobody would touch this. It's global news and in all the newspapers. If you buy this, if you are apprehended, you end up in prison. You cannot show it to your friends, you cannot leave it to your children.”

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

Crucially, however, dismantling or re-cutting removes the evidence of the theft. “I suspect that the Louvre thieves will try to take the stolen goods to locations with diamond expertise like a country, India or even as close as Antwerp, and find someone to cut out the gems,” suggested Marinello.

The robbery at the Louvre has already raised questions about protective steps at the institution, with a leaked state auditor report expected to be published next month criticising “significant” and “ongoing” slow progress in updating equipment and observing that surveillance were missing in many rooms. But specialists say showing precious items in older structures with a constant flow of visitors comes with risks that are impossible to remove entirely.

“Historic buildings are much harder to secure,” explained Erin Thompson. “Many of them 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 designed “as a stronghold”, said a security advisor. “There should be several layers to deter intruders.”

Modern buildings are fitted with advanced external CCTV cameras or in-built seismic detectors that raise alarm about a smashed window in immediately, but old museums may be hesitant to uglify their appearance. Detection devices can be difficult to fit to stuccoed ceilings. Motion and sound detectors may also have to be disabled during the day as hordes of visitors walk through a museum.

The timing of the robbery, which took place between morning hours in Paris, was typical of modern robberies, Stürmann said. “There’s a good reason why thefts tend to happen at either opening or closing times. It’s often when security change their shifts and prior to the museum is full of visitors who effectively act as extra protection.”

Technological progress 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 bypass protections. In Paris, the robbers reached the museum’s upper level with a mobile equipment and cut through a window with a electric tool.

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

The institution has an on-site team of about fifty permanent firefighters, but their mission is mostly to protect the artworks from fires and flooding. “There is no rapid-response unit,” Sciolino said. “In the end, the safety of the Louvre all comes down to government support and funding, and currently the nation lacks sufficient money.”