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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 Paris traffic on humble scooters may seem like the most audacious of crimes, carried out for global fame and ensuing movie adaptations.

Experts who observe trends in international art crime, however, see the recent robbery at the Louvre as something more prosaic: the latest in a series 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 Europe, the UK and the US. The location, they suggest, would have been of secondary concern to the thieves.

“You may ask why criminals who want to steal expensive jewellery are breaking into a world-famous museum rather than a Cartier store,” said an expert in art recovery. “The answer is simple: it’s because nowadays a Cartier store is more secure.”

A series of aggressive jewellery shop thefts mean that many outlets have strengthened their protection in recent years, with security personnel on their locations and merchandise no longer kept on display overnight. Cultural institutions, meanwhile, look more exposed, in part because of the inherent factor of being public-facing institutions in historic buildings, and also the current economic climate in many developed nations.

“Since Covid, governments across the world have reduced spending on police and the culture sector,” said Marinello. “If thieves can get into the Louvre, it shows how at risk our museums have become. This is a horrible time to be a museum.”

The robbery of the objects – featuring jewelry pieces made up of precious stones and 631 diamonds, the tiara of Empress Eugénie containing nearly 2,000 diamonds and a hugely valuable diadem once possessed by a royal that the thieves left by the roadside on their way out – has naturally been compared with the historical theft of the famous painting from the same museum, performed by the worker Vincenzo Peruggia.

Better comparisons may be the recent burglary of jewellery from Dresden’s Green Vault Museum worth over €113m, the theft of a £4.75m valuable object from a UK landmark the same year, the 2017 heist of a valuable item from Berlin’s Bode Museum or even a series of robberies of sports memorabilia from US mining museums.

“There’s a simple pattern here,” said Marinello. “Break in, take items, and dismantle them as quickly as possible.”

If the items were to stay whole, experts say, the criminals would struggle to sell them. “There’s no way to sell something as immediately identifiable as the museum's gems on the licit market”, commented an art crime researcher of the a relevant organization.

“They would be immediately recognised, especially given the cultural authorities has released images of the items. Even a individual buyer or an auction house would want to see documentation establishing proper ownership before handling such remarkable pieces.”

In the previous years, institutions were often reluctant 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 reported on, the keeping and sale of taken items is dangerous for any lawbreaker.

“If you steal a famous painting, it has to remain intact or it becomes valueless, and you have to devise a scheme to keep it in hiding, perhaps by moving it among difficult criminal actors,” said Marinello. “There's ongoing risk to the danger of an partner informing authorities to cash in a ransom.”

For comparable factors, an investigator said it was highly improbable that the theft 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 newspapers. If you buy this, if you are apprehended, you go to jail. You can't display it to your acquaintances, you cannot bequeath it to your family.”

Altering taken items by melting down or reshaping does lower the worth. When it comes to gems, it also comes with considerable risk because modern cutting techniques give stones a larger and lighter appearance, and antique-cut stones would either attract notice or reduce value for a coverup.

Importantly, however, dismantling or re-cutting eliminates the evidence of the theft. “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 Antwerp, and locate an expert to cut out the gems,” said Marinello.

The robbery at the Louvre has already raised questions about security measures at the museum, with a unauthorized official review expected to be published soon criticising “significant” and “ongoing” slow progress in updating systems and noting that surveillance were lacking in multiple areas. But specialists say showing precious items in older structures with a steady stream of visitors comes with dangers that are impossible to remove entirely.

“Historic buildings are more difficult to protect,” said Erin Thompson. “They often have nice big street-facing windows that makes it easy for thieves 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 security systems for structures should be conceptualised “as a stronghold”, noted a security advisor. “There should be several layers to repel intruders.”

Contemporary structures are fitted with advanced surveillance systems or integrated vibration sensors that alert about a smashed window in real time, but historic institutions may be reluctant to alter their exteriors. Detection devices can be hard to fit to decorated surfaces. Motion and sound detectors may also have to be disabled during the day as hordes of visitors walk through a museum.

The schedule of the robbery, which occurred 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. Frequently when guards change their shifts and before the museum is crowded who actually act as additional security staff.”

Technological progress may have introduced new gadgets that can notify more rapidly and effectively, but it has also provided thieves new tools with which to circumvent protections. In the city, the thieves accessed the museum’s first-floor window with a mobile equipment and cut through a glass pane with a electric tool.

Elaine Sciolino said the discussion in France about the historic structure had primarily centered on crowd control in the past decade, and not as much on security.

The museum has an in-house team of about 50 full-time firefighters, but their mission is mostly to safeguard the artworks from blazes and flooding. “There is no rapid-response unit,” Sciolino said. “Ultimately, the security of the Louvre all depends on political will and funding, and currently the nation simply has no money.”