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Breaking into the world’s most-visited museum in broad daylight, grabbing eight items of invaluable historical gems and vanishing into Paris 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 international art crime, however, see the recent robbery at the Louvre as something more prosaic: the most recent in a string of smash-and-grab thefts focused more on the material value of precious stones or metals than the historical importance, perpetuating a pattern that has appeared over the last ten years in Europe, Britain and the US. The location, they suggest, would have been of secondary concern to the criminals.

“One might wonder why thieves who want to steal expensive jewellery are breaking into a globally renowned museum rather than a Cartier store,” stated an expert in art recovery. “The answer is simple: it’s because nowadays a Cartier store is more secure.”

A series of aggressive retail store thefts mean that many outlets have strengthened their protection in the past few years, with armed guards on their locations and wares no longer kept on display overnight. Museums, on the other hand, look more exposed, in part because of the inherent factor of being accessible institutions in older structures, and also the current economic climate in many developed nations.

“Since Covid, governments across the globe have cut back on police and the arts funding,” said Marinello. “With criminals entering the Louvre, it demonstrates how vulnerable our museums have become. This is a difficult time to be a museum.”

The robbery of the items – including necklaces made up of eight sapphires and hundreds of gems, the tiara of Empress Eugénie containing nearly 2,000 diamonds and a extremely expensive diadem once owned by Napoleon III’s wife that the robbers left by the street on their way out – has inevitably been compared with the 1911 theft of the Mona Lisa from the same museum, performed by the Italian handyman Vincenzo Peruggia.

More relevant points of reference may be the 2019 burglary of jewellery from Dresden’s Green Vault Museum worth over €113m, the theft of a multi-million pound valuable object from a UK landmark the same year, the 2017 heist of a large gold coin from a European museum or even a series of robberies of sports memorabilia from US mining museums.

“It's a clear trend here,” said Marinello. “Smash, grab, and melt it down as rapidly as possible.”

If the artefacts were to remain intact, experts say, the thieves would find it hard to sell them. “It's impossible to trade something as immediately identifiable as the Louvre’s jewels on the licit market”, commented Lynda Albertson of the Association for Research into Crimes against Art.

“They are too well-known, especially given the Ministry of Culture has published photos of the items. Even a individual buyer or an sales venue would want to see paperwork confirming legal possession before touching such striking pieces.”

In the previous years, museums were often reluctant to go public about the loss of well-known works of art and would remain quiet out of shame. Now, as cultural robberies are more reported on, the keeping and sale of taken items is risky business for any lawbreaker.

“If you steal a Picasso, it has to stay complete or it becomes worthless, and you have to conceive of a plan to conceal it, maybe by moving it among difficult criminal actors,” said Marinello. “There's ongoing risk to the danger of an accomplice telling the police to cash in a reward.”

For similar reasons, an art detective said it was vanishingly unlikely that the robbery had been commissioned. “Stolen to order is something from films,” he said. “No one would handle these items. It's global news and in all the media. If you buy this, if you get caught, you end up in prison. You can't display it to your friends, you cannot bequeath it to your children.”

Altering taken items by melting down or re-cutting does reduce the value. When it comes to gems, it also comes with significant danger because contemporary cutting techniques give stones a larger and lighter appearance, and antique-cut stones would either attract notice or barter the price down for a coverup.

Crucially, however, melting down or re-cutting eliminates the proof of the crime. “My guess is that the robbers will try to take the stolen goods to locations with diamond expertise like a country, another nation or even as nearby as Antwerp, and locate an expert to cut out the stones,” suggested Marinello.

The heist at the Louvre has already brought up concerns about protective steps at the museum, with a unauthorized state auditor report expected to be published next month criticising “considerable” and “persistent” delays in modernizing systems and observing that security cameras were lacking in many rooms. But security experts say displaying valuable objects in older structures with a steady stream of guests comes with dangers that are impossible to remove entirely.

“Older structures are more difficult to secure,” explained Erin Thompson. “Many of them have large accessible windows that makes it easy for criminals to get away, and there may be preservation laws in place that mean you can’t fit them with proper bulletproof glass.”

The most solid protective measures for buildings should be conceptualised “like a fortress”, said a security advisor. “It should include multiple levels to deter attackers.”

Modern buildings are equipped with state-of-the-art external CCTV cameras or in-built seismic detectors that alert about a broken glass in real time, but historic institutions may be reluctant to alter their exteriors. Detection devices can be difficult to install to stuccoed ceilings. Motion and sound detectors may also have to be disabled during the day as crowds walk through a museum.

The timing of the robbery, which occurred between 9.30am and 9.40am in Paris, was typical 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 security change their shifts and before the museum is crowded who actually act as additional security staff.”

Advances in technology may have thrown up new gadgets that can notify more quickly and efficiently, but it has also given thieves new methods with which to circumvent protections. In Paris, the thieves reached the museum’s first-floor window with a mobile equipment and breached a window with a battery-powered disc cutter.

Elaine Sciolino said the discussion in France about the historic structure had mostly centered on visitor management in the past decade, and not as much on security.

The museum has an in-house team of about fifty full-time emergency personnel, but their mission is mostly to protect the collection from blazes and flooding. “There is no quick reaction team,” Sciolino said. “Ultimately, the safety of the Louvre all comes down to political will and funding, and currently France lacks sufficient money.”