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Entering the world’s most-visited art institution in the middle of the day, grabbing eight pieces of priceless Napoleonic jewellery and disappearing into the city traffic on humble scooters may seem like the boldest of crimes, carried out for international notoriety and ensuing movie adaptations.

Specialists who study patterns in international art crime, however, see Sunday morning’s robbery at the Louvre as something more prosaic: the most recent in a string of quick-hit thefts focused more on the material value of valuable gems or materials than the historical importance, perpetuating a trend that has emerged over the last decade in Europe, the UK and the US. The location, they suggest, would have been of lesser importance to the thieves.

“You may ask why criminals who want to steal valuable jewellery are entering 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 Cartier store is better protected.”

A spate of aggressive jewellery shop thefts indicate that many stores have strengthened their security in the past few years, with security personnel on their locations and merchandise no longer kept on display overnight. Museums, meanwhile, look more exposed, partly because of the inherent factor of being accessible institutions in historic buildings, and partly the financial situation in many developed nations.

“After the pandemic, authorities across the world have reduced spending on police and the culture sector,” noted Marinello. “If thieves can get into the Louvre, it demonstrates how at risk our institutions have become. This is a horrible time to be a museum.”

The robbery of the objects – featuring necklaces made up of eight sapphires and 631 diamonds, the crown of a historical figure containing nearly 2,000 diamonds and a extremely expensive diadem once owned by a royal that the robbers dropped by the street on their way out – has naturally been compared with the 1911 theft of the Mona Lisa from the same museum, performed by the worker Vincenzo Peruggia.

More relevant points of reference may be the 2019 theft of jewellery from Dresden’s Green Vault Museum worth over €113m, the taking of a £4.75m gold toilet from a UK landmark the same year, the recent robbery of a large gold coin from a European museum or even a spate of thefts of collector items from American institutions.

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

If the items were to remain intact, specialists say, the thieves would struggle to sell them. “It's impossible to trade something as recognizable as the Louvre’s jewels on the licit market”, said Lynda Albertson of the a relevant organization.

“They would be immediately recognised, especially given the Ministry of Culture has published photos of the items. Even a private collector or an auction house would want to see documentation confirming proper ownership before touching such striking pieces.”

In the previous years, institutions were often reluctant to announce publicly about the disappearance of well-known works of art and would remain quiet out of embarrassment. Now, as art thefts are more widely publicised, the storage and selling of stolen art is dangerous for any lawbreaker.

“Taking a Picasso, it has to remain intact or it becomes worthless, and you have to devise a scheme to conceal it, maybe by moving it among dangerous individuals,” noted Marinello. “There's ongoing risk to the risk of an partner informing authorities to collect a ransom.”

For similar reasons, an investigator said it was vanishingly unlikely that the robbery had been commissioned. “Commissioned theft is something from films,” he said. “Nobody would touch this. It’s all around the world and in all the newspapers. If you acquire these, if you are apprehended, you end up in prison. You cannot show it to your friends, you cannot leave it to your children.”

Modifying taken items by dismantling or re-cutting does lower the value. When it comes to gems, it also comes with significant danger because contemporary cutting techniques give stones a larger and brighter appearance, and antique-cut stones would either attract notice or reduce value for a coverup.

Crucially, however, dismantling or re-cutting removes the evidence of the theft. “My guess is that the robbers will try to bring the items to locations with diamond expertise like a country, another nation or even as nearby as a city, and locate an expert to remove the gems,” suggested Marinello.

The robbery at the Louvre has already brought up concerns about security measures at the institution, with a leaked official review expected to be published soon criticising “considerable” and “persistent” delays in updating systems and noting that security cameras were lacking in many rooms. But specialists say showing valuable objects in older structures with a steady stream of visitors comes with dangers that are not possible to remove entirely.

“Historic buildings are more difficult to secure,” said an art crime professor. “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 are unable to install them with proper bulletproof glass.”

The best protective measures for buildings should be conceptualised “as a stronghold”, noted a security advisor. “There should be multiple levels to deter intruders.”

Modern buildings are fitted with state-of-the-art external CCTV cameras or in-built seismic detectors that raise alarm about a broken glass in real time, but historic institutions may be hesitant to uglify their exteriors. Laser scanners can be difficult to fit to decorated surfaces. Sensors may also have to be turned off during the daytime as crowds stomp through a museum.

The schedule of the Louvre raid, which took place between 9.30am and 9.40am in Paris, was common of modern robberies, Stürmann said. “It's logical why thefts tend to happen at either start or end of day. Frequently when security change their shifts and before the museum is full of visitors who actually act as extra protection.”

Technological progress may have introduced new gadgets that can notify more rapidly and effectively, but it has also given thieves new tools with which to bypass security measures. In Paris, the thieves accessed the museum’s upper level 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 historic structure had mostly focused on visitor management in the past decade, and less on protection.

The museum has an on-site brigade of about 50 permanent emergency personnel, but their purpose is mainly to safeguard the artworks from blazes and flooding. “There is no quick reaction team,” Sciolino said. “In the end, the safety of the Louvre all comes down to political will and funding, and currently France lacks sufficient resources.”