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Breaking into the planet's most popular museum in broad daylight, grabbing eight pieces of priceless Napoleonic jewellery and vanishing into Paris traffic on simple scooters may seem like the most audacious of crimes, executed for global fame and ensuing movie adaptations.

Specialists who study patterns in global cultural theft, however, see the recent robbery at the Louvre as a more practical matter: the latest in a series of quick-hit thefts focused more on the material value of valuable gems or metals than the artifacts’ significance, continuing a trend that has appeared over the last ten years in Europe, Britain and the US. The venue, they propose, would have been of secondary concern to the thieves.

“One might wonder why criminals who want to steal expensive jewellery are breaking into a globally renowned museum rather than a luxury jewelry store,” said an expert in art recovery. “It's straightforward: it’s because these days a high-end boutique is more secure.”

A series of aggressive jewellery shop thefts mean that many stores have strengthened their security in recent years, with armed guards on their premises and wares no longer kept on display overnight. Cultural institutions, on the other hand, look vulnerable, partly because of the inherent factor of being public-facing institutions in historic buildings, and partly the current economic climate in many developed nations.

“After the pandemic, 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 vulnerable our institutions have become. This is a horrible time to be a museum.”

The theft of the items – including necklaces made up of eight sapphires and 631 diamonds, the tiara of a historical figure featuring nearly 2,000 diamonds and a extremely expensive diadem once possessed by Napoleon III’s wife that the thieves 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 worker the thief.

Better points of reference may be the recent burglary of jewellery from a German institution worth over €113m, 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 Berlin’s Bode Museum or even a series of thefts of sports memorabilia from American institutions.

“It's a clear trend here,” said Marinello. “Break in, take items, and dismantle them as quickly as possible.”

If the items were to remain intact, specialists say, the thieves would struggle to find a buyer. “It's impossible to trade something as immediately identifiable as the museum's gems on the legal marketplace”, 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 pieces. Even a individual buyer or an auction house would want to see paperwork establishing legal possession before touching such striking pieces.”

In the past, institutions were often reluctant to go public about the loss of famous works of art and would stay silent out of shame. These days, as art thefts are more reported on, 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 worthless, and you have to conceive of a scheme to keep it in hiding, perhaps by passing it around dangerous individuals,” said Marinello. “And you’re constantly exposed to the danger of an accomplice telling the police to collect a reward.”

For comparable factors, an art detective said it was vanishingly unlikely that the robbery had been commissioned. “Stolen to order is something from Hollywood movies,” he said. “Nobody would touch this. It’s all around the world and in all the media. If you buy this, if you get caught, you end up in prison. You cannot show it to your acquaintances, you cannot bequeath it to your family.”

Altering stolen works by dismantling or re-cutting does reduce the worth. When it comes to gems, it also comes with significant danger because modern methods give stones a bigger and lighter surface area, and antique-cut stones would either attract notice or barter the price down for a concealment.

Crucially, however, melting down or reshaping removes the evidence of the theft. “I suspect that the robbers will try to bring the items to locations with diamond expertise like a country, India or even as close as Antwerp, and find someone to remove the gems,” said Marinello.

The robbery at the Louvre has already brought up concerns about protective steps at the institution, with a leaked state auditor report expected to be released soon criticising “considerable” and “persistent” slow progress in updating systems and observing that security cameras were lacking in multiple areas. But specialists say showing valuable objects in older structures with a steady stream of guests comes with dangers that are not possible to remove entirely.

“Older structures are more difficult to protect,” said Erin Thompson. “They often 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 proper bulletproof glass.”

The best protective measures for structures should be designed “as a stronghold”, said Peter Stürmann. “There should be multiple levels to deter intruders.”

Modern buildings are equipped with advanced external CCTV cameras or in-built seismic detectors that raise alarm about a smashed window in real time, but historic institutions may be hesitant to alter their exteriors. Detection devices can be difficult to install 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 timing of the Louvre raid, which occurred between morning hours in Paris, was common of modern robberies, Stürmann said. “It's logical why thefts tend to happen at either opening or closing times. Frequently when guards rotate and before the museum is full of visitors who actually act as additional security staff.”

Technological progress may have thrown up new devices that can raise the alarm more rapidly and effectively, but it has also given robbers new methods with which to circumvent security measures. In Paris, the robbers accessed the museum’s first-floor window with a vehicle-mounted ladder and cut through a window with a battery-powered disc cutter.

Elaine Sciolino said the conversation in the country about the historic building had mostly focused on visitor management in recent years, and less on protection.

The museum has an in-house team of about 50 permanent firefighters, but their mission is mostly to protect the artworks from blazes and flooding. “There is no rapid-response unit,” Sciolino said. “Ultimately, the security of the Louvre all comes down to government support and money, and at present the nation simply has no resources.”