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Entering the world’s most-visited museum in broad daylight, grabbing eight items of invaluable Napoleonic jewellery and vanishing into the city traffic on humble scooters may seem like the boldest of crimes, carried out for international notoriety and subsequent Hollywood film treatments.

Experts who study patterns in global cultural theft, however, see Sunday morning’s heist at the Louvre as a more practical matter: the latest in a string of quick-hit thefts focused more on the material value of precious stones or materials than the historical importance, continuing a trend that has appeared over the last decade in Europe, Britain and the US. The venue, they propose, would have been of secondary concern to the criminals.

“You may ask why thieves who want to take valuable jewellery are breaking into a globally renowned museum rather than a luxury jewelry store,” stated an expert in art recovery. “The answer is simple: it’s because these days a high-end boutique is better protected.”

A spate of violent retail store thefts mean that many outlets have beefed up their protection in the past few years, with armed guards on their premises and wares no longer shown overnight. Cultural institutions, meanwhile, look more exposed, partly because of the in-built factor of being public-facing institutions in historic buildings, and also the current economic climate in many developed nations.

“Since Covid, governments across the globe have cut back on law enforcement and the culture sector,” said Marinello. “If thieves can get into the Louvre, it demonstrates how vulnerable our museums have become. This is a horrible time to be a museum.”

The theft of the objects – featuring necklaces made up of eight sapphires and hundreds of gems, the crown of a historical figure containing thousands of diamonds and a hugely valuable diadem once possessed by Napoleon III’s wife that the robbers left by the roadside on their way out – has naturally drawn comparisons with the 1911 theft of the famous painting from the same museum, carried out by the worker Vincenzo Peruggia.

Better points of reference may be the recent theft of jewellery from a German institution worth over €113m, the taking of a multi-million pound valuable object from a UK landmark the same year, the recent heist of a large gold coin from Berlin’s Bode Museum or even a spate of robberies of collector items from US mining museums.

“There’s a simple pattern here,” explained Marinello. “Break in, take items, and dismantle them as quickly as possible.”

If the artefacts were to stay whole, specialists say, the criminals would struggle to find a buyer. “It's impossible to trade something as immediately identifiable as the museum's gems on the licit market”, commented Lynda Albertson of the Association for Research into Crimes against Art.

“They would be immediately recognised, 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 touching such striking pieces.”

In the previous years, institutions were often reluctant to go public about the disappearance of well-known art pieces and would stay silent out of shame. These days, as art thefts are more widely publicised, the keeping and selling of stolen art is dangerous for any lawbreaker.

“If you steal a Picasso, it has to stay complete or it becomes valueless, and you have to devise a plan to conceal it, perhaps by passing it around dangerous individuals,” noted Marinello. “And you’re constantly exposed to the risk of an accomplice telling the police to cash in a ransom.”

For similar reasons, an art detective said it was vanishingly unlikely that the theft had been ordered. “Commissioned theft is something from Hollywood movies,” he said. “Nobody would touch this. 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 cannot show it to your acquaintances, you cannot leave it to your children.”

Modifying taken items by dismantling or re-cutting does reduce the value. When it comes to diamonds, it also comes with significant danger because modern cutting techniques give stones a bigger and lighter surface area, and antique-cut stones would either draw unwanted attention or reduce value for a concealment.

Crucially, however, melting down or reshaping eliminates the evidence of the theft. “My guess is that the Louvre thieves will try to take the stolen goods to places with gem knowledge like a country, India or even as nearby as a city, and locate an expert to cut out the stones,” said Marinello.

The heist at the Louvre has already raised questions about protective steps at the museum, with a unauthorized state auditor report expected to be released soon pointing out “considerable” and “ongoing” delays in modernizing systems and observing that security cameras were lacking in multiple areas. But security experts say showing valuable objects in historic buildings with a steady stream of guests 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 nice big street-facing 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 secure windows.”

The best security systems for structures should be conceptualised “like a fortress”, said a security advisor. “It should include multiple levels to deter attackers.”

Contemporary structures are equipped with advanced external CCTV cameras or integrated vibration sensors that raise alarm about a smashed window in real time, but historic institutions may be reluctant to uglify their appearance. Laser scanners can be difficult to install to decorated surfaces. Sensors may also have to be turned off during the day as crowds walk through a museum.

The schedule of the Louvre raid, which occurred between morning hours in Paris, was typical of modern robberies, Stürmann said. “It's logical why thefts tend to happen at either opening or closing times. It’s often when security change their shifts and prior to the museum is crowded who effectively act as additional security staff.”

Advances in technology may have introduced new gadgets that can notify more quickly and efficiently, but it has also given robbers new methods with which to circumvent protections. In the city, the robbers accessed the museum’s first-floor window with a vehicle-mounted ladder and breached a glass pane with a electric tool.

An author said the discussion in France about the historic building had mostly focused on crowd control in the past decade, and not as much on security.

The institution has an on-site brigade of about fifty full-time emergency personnel, but their purpose is mainly to protect the artworks from blazes and flooding. “There is no rapid-response unit,” Sciolino said. “In the end, the security of the Louvre all depends on government support and funding, and at present France simply has no money.”