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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 Paris traffic on simple scooters may seem like the boldest of crimes, executed for global fame and subsequent Hollywood film treatments.

Experts who study trends in international art crime, however, see the recent robbery at the Louvre as a more practical matter: the latest in a string of quick-hit thefts centered more on the material value of precious stones or metals than the historical importance, continuing a pattern that has appeared 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 thieves who want to steal expensive jewellery are breaking into a globally renowned museum rather than a Cartier store,” stated Christopher A Marinello. “The answer is simple: it’s because these days a Cartier store is better protected.”

A series of aggressive jewellery shop thefts indicate that many outlets have beefed up their security in the past few years, with armed guards on their locations and wares no longer kept on display overnight. Cultural institutions, on the other hand, look more exposed, partly because of the inherent factor of being accessible institutions in older structures, and also the financial situation in many developed nations.

“Since Covid, governments across the globe have reduced spending on law enforcement and the culture sector,” noted 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 theft of the items – including necklaces made up of eight sapphires and hundreds of gems, the tiara of Empress Eugénie featuring thousands of diamonds and a hugely valuable diadem once owned by Napoleon III’s wife that the robbers dropped by the street on their way out – has inevitably drawn comparisons with the historical theft of the Mona Lisa from the Louvre, carried out by the worker the thief.

Better comparisons may be the 2019 theft of valuables from a German institution worth over millions, the theft of a multi-million pound gold toilet from a UK landmark the that year, the 2017 heist of a large gold coin from a European museum or even a series of thefts 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 artefacts were to stay whole, experts say, the thieves would struggle to sell them. “There’s no way to trade something as recognizable as the Louvre’s jewels on the licit market”, said Lynda Albertson of the Association for Research into Crimes against Art.

“They are too well-known, especially given the cultural authorities has published photos of the pieces. Even a individual buyer or an auction house would want to see documentation establishing proper ownership before handling such remarkable pieces.”

In the past, museums were often reluctant to go public about the disappearance of well-known works of art and would remain quiet out of embarrassment. Now, as cultural robberies are more widely publicised, the storage and selling of stolen art is risky business for any lawbreaker.

“Taking a famous painting, it has to remain intact or it becomes worthless, and you have to conceive of a scheme to keep it in hiding, perhaps by moving it among difficult criminal actors,” said Marinello. “And you’re constantly exposed to the risk of an accomplice telling the police to cash in a reward.”

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

Altering stolen works by melting down or re-cutting does lower the worth. When it comes to diamonds, it also comes with significant danger because contemporary methods give stones a larger and brighter surface area, and older-style stones would either attract notice or barter the price down for a concealment.

Importantly, however, dismantling or re-cutting eliminates the evidence of the crime. “I suspect that the robbers will try to bring the items to places with diamond expertise like Israel, India or even as close as a city, and locate an expert to cut out the gems,” suggested Marinello.

The heist at the Louvre has already raised questions about protective steps at the museum, with a leaked state auditor report expected to be released soon pointing out “significant” and “ongoing” slow progress in modernizing equipment and noting that surveillance were lacking in multiple areas. But specialists say showing precious items in historic buildings with a constant flow of guests comes with risks that are not possible to eliminate completely.

“Historic buildings are much harder to protect,” said an art crime professor. “They often have large accessible windows that makes it easy for thieves to escape, 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 structures should be designed “like a fortress”, noted a security advisor. “It should include multiple levels to repel attackers.”

Modern buildings are equipped with state-of-the-art external CCTV cameras or in-built 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 hard to fit to decorated surfaces. Motion and sound detectors may also have to be turned off during the day as crowds walk through a museum.

The schedule of the robbery, which took place between 9.30am and 9.40am in Paris, was typical of recent thefts, Stürmann said. “It's logical why robberies tend to happen at either start or end of day. It’s often when guards rotate and prior to the museum is full of visitors who effectively act as extra protection.”

Advances in technology may have thrown up new devices that can notify more rapidly and effectively, but it has also given robbers new tools with which to bypass protections. In Paris, the robbers reached the museum’s first-floor window with a mobile equipment and cut through a glass pane with a battery-powered disc cutter.

An author said the conversation in the country about the 232-year-old building had primarily centered on crowd control in recent years, and not as much on protection.

The museum has an on-site brigade of about 50 permanent emergency personnel, but their purpose is mostly to safeguard 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 comes down to political will and money, and at present the nation lacks sufficient money.”