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

Experts who study patterns in global cultural theft, however, see Sunday morning’s heist at the Louvre as something more prosaic: the most recent in a series of smash-and-grab thefts centered more on the monetary worth of valuable gems or materials than the artifacts’ significance, continuing a trend that has appeared over the last ten years in Europe, the UK and the US. The location, they propose, would have been of secondary concern to the criminals.

“One might wonder why thieves who want to take valuable jewellery are entering a globally renowned museum rather than a Cartier store,” said an expert in art recovery. “It's straightforward: it’s because nowadays a high-end boutique is more secure.”

A series of violent retail store thefts mean that many outlets have beefed up their security in the past few years, with armed guards on their premises and merchandise no longer kept on display overnight. Museums, on the other hand, look vulnerable, partly because of the inherent reason of being accessible institutions in historic buildings, and partly the current economic climate in many western countries.

“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 vulnerable our museums have become. This is a horrible time to be a museum.”

The theft of the objects – including necklaces made up of eight sapphires and 631 diamonds, the crown 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 naturally drawn comparisons with the 1911 theft of the Mona Lisa from the same museum, carried out by the Italian handyman the thief.

More relevant points of reference may be the 2019 burglary of valuables from a German institution worth over millions, the taking of a £4.75m valuable object from a UK landmark the same year, the 2017 heist of a valuable item 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 quickly as possible.”

If the items were to stay whole, specialists say, the thieves would struggle to find a buyer. “There’s no way to sell something as recognizable as the museum's gems on the licit market”, said an art crime researcher of the Association for Research into Crimes against Art.

“They are too well-known, particularly given the cultural authorities has published photos of the items. Even a private collector or an auction house would want to see documentation confirming proper ownership before handling such striking pieces.”

In the past, museums were often reluctant to go public about the loss of famous art pieces and would remain quiet out of shame. Now, as art thefts are more widely publicised, the storage and sale of taken items 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 devise a scheme to keep it in hiding, maybe by passing it around dangerous individuals,” said Marinello. “There's ongoing risk to the risk of an accomplice telling the police to collect a ransom.”

For comparable factors, an art detective said it was highly improbable that the robbery had been ordered. “Stolen to order is something from Hollywood movies,” 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 end up in prison. You can't display it to your acquaintances, you cannot leave it to your family.”

Modifying taken items by melting down or reshaping does lower the value. When it comes to gems, it also comes with considerable risk because modern methods give gems a bigger and brighter surface area, and older-style stones would either attract notice or reduce value for a concealment.

Crucially, however, melting down or re-cutting eliminates the evidence 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 close as a city, and find someone to cut out the stones,” said Marinello.

The heist at the Louvre has already brought up concerns about protective steps at the museum, with a leaked state auditor report expected to be released soon criticising “significant” and “persistent” slow progress in modernizing systems and noting that surveillance were missing in multiple areas. But security experts say displaying valuable objects in historic buildings with a constant flow of guests comes with risks that are not possible to remove entirely.

“Historic buildings are more difficult to protect,” said an art crime professor. “They often have large accessible windows that allows for thieves to get away, and there may be building protection statutes in place that mean you are unable to install them with secure windows.”

The best protective measures for buildings should be designed “as a stronghold”, noted Peter Stürmann. “There should be several layers to repel attackers.”

Contemporary structures are fitted with state-of-the-art surveillance systems or in-built vibration sensors that raise alarm about a smashed window in real time, but historic institutions may be hesitant to uglify their exteriors. Laser scanners can be hard to fit to stuccoed ceilings. Motion and sound detectors may also have to be turned off during the day as hordes of visitors walk through a museum.

The timing of the robbery, which took place between morning hours local time, was typical of modern robberies, Stürmann said. “There’s a good reason why robberies tend to happen at either opening or closing times. Frequently when guards rotate and prior to the museum is full of visitors who actually act as additional security staff.”

Advances in technology may have introduced new gadgets that can raise the alarm more rapidly and efficiently, but it has also given robbers new tools with which to circumvent security measures. In the city, the thieves reached the museum’s first-floor window with a mobile equipment and cut through a window with a battery-powered disc cutter.

An author said the conversation in the country about the 232-year-old building had primarily focused on visitor management in recent years, and not as much on security.

The museum has an in-house brigade of about fifty permanent firefighters, but their purpose is mainly to protect the artworks from blazes and flooding. “There isn't a quick reaction team,” Sciolino said. “Ultimately, the safety of the Louvre all comes down to political will and funding, and currently France lacks sufficient resources.”