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Entering the planet's most popular museum in the middle of the day, grabbing eight pieces of priceless Napoleonic jewellery and vanishing into the city traffic on simple scooters may seem like the boldest of crimes, carried out for international notoriety and subsequent Hollywood film treatments.

Specialists who study trends in global cultural theft, however, see the recent robbery at the Louvre as something more prosaic: the most recent in a string of smash-and-grab thefts centered more on the material value of valuable gems or metals than the historical importance, continuing a trend that has appeared over the last ten years in Germany, Britain and the US. The venue, they propose, would have been of secondary concern to the thieves.

“One might wonder why thieves who want to steal valuable jewellery are entering a globally renowned museum rather than a Cartier store,” stated an expert in art recovery. “The answer is simple: it’s because these days a Cartier store is better protected.”

A series of violent retail store thefts mean that many stores have strengthened their protection in recent years, with security personnel on their locations and wares no longer shown overnight. Cultural institutions, on the other hand, look vulnerable, in part because of the inherent reason of being accessible institutions in historic buildings, and partly the current economic climate in many developed nations.

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

The theft of the objects – featuring necklaces made up of eight sapphires and 631 diamonds, the tiara of Empress Eugénie containing nearly 2,000 diamonds and a hugely valuable diadem once owned by a royal that the thieves left by the street on their way out – has naturally been compared with the 1911 theft of the famous painting from the Louvre, performed by the worker Vincenzo Peruggia.

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 Blenheim Palace the that year, the 2017 heist of a valuable item from a European museum or even a series of robberies of sports memorabilia from American institutions.

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

If the artefacts were to stay whole, experts say, the thieves would struggle to sell them. “It's impossible to sell something as recognizable as the Louvre’s jewels on the legal marketplace”, commented Lynda Albertson of the Association for Research into Crimes against Art.

“They are too well-known, particularly given the Ministry of Culture has released images of the items. 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, institutions were often reluctant to announce publicly about the loss of well-known works of art and would remain quiet out of shame. Now, as art thefts are more widely publicised, the keeping and sale of taken items is dangerous for any criminal.

“Taking a famous painting, it has to remain intact or it becomes valueless, and you have to conceive of a plan to keep it in hiding, maybe by passing it around dangerous individuals,” said Marinello. “And you’re constantly exposed to the risk of an accomplice telling the police to cash in a ransom.”

For comparable factors, an art detective said it was highly improbable that the theft had been ordered. “Commissioned theft is something from films,” he said. “No one would handle these items. It's global news and in all the newspapers. If you acquire these, if you are apprehended, you go to jail. You can't display it to your acquaintances, you cannot bequeath it to your family.”

Modifying taken items by dismantling or reshaping does lower the worth. When it comes to gems, it also comes with significant danger because contemporary cutting techniques give gems a bigger and brighter appearance, and older-style stones would either attract notice or barter the price down for a coverup.

Crucially, however, melting down or reshaping eliminates the evidence of the crime. “I suspect that the Louvre thieves will try to take the items to places with gem knowledge like a country, another nation or even as close as Antwerp, and locate an expert to cut out the gems,” said Marinello.

The heist at the Louvre has already raised questions about security measures at the museum, with a unauthorized state auditor report expected to be published next month criticising “considerable” and “ongoing” delays in modernizing systems and observing that surveillance were lacking in multiple areas. But specialists say showing valuable objects in older structures with a constant flow of visitors comes with risks that are not possible to remove entirely.

“Older structures are much harder to secure,” said an art crime professor. “Many of them have nice big street-facing windows that makes it easy for criminals to get away, and there may be building protection statutes in place that mean you are unable to install them with secure windows.”

The most solid protective measures for buildings should be conceptualised “like a fortress”, noted Peter Stürmann. “It should include multiple levels to repel attackers.”

Contemporary structures are equipped with advanced surveillance systems or integrated vibration sensors that alert about a broken glass in real time, but historic institutions may be hesitant to alter their exteriors. 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 schedule of the Louvre raid, which occurred between 9.30am and 9.40am 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 rotate and prior to the museum is full of visitors who actually act as extra protection.”

Technological progress may have introduced new devices that can raise the alarm more rapidly and effectively, but it has also provided thieves new tools with which to circumvent security measures. In Paris, the robbers accessed the museum’s upper level with a mobile equipment and cut through a window with a battery-powered disc cutter.

Elaine Sciolino said the conversation in France about the historic building had primarily focused on crowd control in recent years, and less on security.

The museum has an in-house team of about fifty permanent firefighters, but their mission is mostly to protect the collection from blazes and flooding. “There is no rapid-response unit,” Sciolino said. “Ultimately, the safety of the Louvre all depends on political will and funding, and at present France lacks sufficient resources.”