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Breaking into the world’s most-visited art institution in the middle of the day, taking eight pieces of priceless Napoleonic jewellery and disappearing into Paris traffic on simple scooters may seem like the most audacious of crimes, executed for global fame and subsequent Hollywood film treatments.

Specialists who study trends in global cultural theft, however, see the recent heist at the Louvre as a more practical matter: the most recent in a series of smash-and-grab thefts centered more on the monetary worth of precious stones or materials than the artifacts’ significance, perpetuating a trend that has emerged over the last ten years in Germany, Britain and the US. The venue, they suggest, would have been of lesser importance to the thieves.

“You may ask why thieves who want to steal expensive jewellery are breaking into a globally renowned museum rather than a Cartier store,” said an expert in art recovery. “It's straightforward: it’s because these days a high-end boutique is better protected.”

A spate of aggressive jewellery shop thefts mean that many stores have beefed up their security in the past few years, with security personnel on their premises and wares no longer shown overnight. Cultural institutions, meanwhile, look more exposed, partly because of the inherent factor of being public-facing institutions in older structures, and partly the current economic climate in many developed nations.

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

The robbery of the objects – featuring jewelry pieces made up of precious stones and 631 diamonds, the crown of Empress Eugénie containing thousands of diamonds and a extremely expensive crown once possessed by a royal that the thieves left by the street on their way out – has naturally drawn comparisons with the historical theft of the Mona Lisa from the Louvre, performed by the worker the thief.

Better comparisons may be the 2019 burglary of jewellery from Dresden’s Green Vault Museum worth over €113m, the theft of a £4.75m valuable object from Blenheim Palace the that year, the recent robbery of a large gold coin from Berlin’s Bode Museum or even a spate of robberies of sports memorabilia from American institutions.

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

If the items were to stay whole, experts say, the criminals would struggle to sell them. “There’s no way to trade something as immediately identifiable as the museum's gems on the legal marketplace”, said Lynda Albertson of the Association for Research into Crimes against Art.

“They would be immediately recognised, especially given the cultural authorities has released images of the pieces. Even a individual buyer or an auction house would want to see documentation establishing proper ownership before handling such striking pieces.”

In the past, institutions were often reluctant to announce publicly about the disappearance of well-known art pieces and would remain quiet out of embarrassment. 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 famous painting, it has to stay complete or it becomes worthless, and you have to devise a scheme to conceal it, maybe by passing it around dangerous individuals,” noted Marinello. “And you’re constantly exposed to the danger of an partner telling the police to cash in a reward.”

For similar reasons, an art detective said it was highly improbable that the robbery had been ordered. “Commissioned theft is something from films,” he said. “No one would handle these items. It's global news and in all the newspapers. If you buy this, if you are apprehended, you go to jail. You cannot show it to your acquaintances, you cannot leave it to your children.”

Altering taken items by melting down or reshaping does reduce the value. When it comes to diamonds, it also comes with considerable risk because modern cutting techniques give stones a bigger and lighter appearance, and antique-cut stones would either attract notice or reduce value for a concealment.

Crucially, however, dismantling or re-cutting removes the proof of the theft. “My guess is that the Louvre thieves will try to take the stolen goods to locations with diamond expertise like a country, another nation or even as nearby as Antwerp, and find someone to cut out the stones,” said Marinello.

The robbery at the Louvre has already raised questions about protective steps at the institution, with a leaked state auditor report expected to be published soon criticising “significant” and “persistent” delays in modernizing systems and observing that surveillance were lacking in many rooms. But security experts say displaying valuable objects in historic buildings with a constant flow of visitors comes with dangers that are impossible to remove entirely.

“Older structures are much harder to secure,” explained an art crime professor. “They often have nice big street-facing windows that allows for thieves to escape, 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 structures should be conceptualised “like a fortress”, said Peter Stürmann. “There should be several layers to repel intruders.”

Modern buildings are equipped with advanced external CCTV cameras or in-built vibration sensors that raise alarm about a smashed window in real time, but historic institutions may be hesitant to uglify their appearance. Detection devices can be difficult to install to decorated surfaces. Motion and sound detectors may also have to be turned off during the day as hordes of visitors walk through a museum.

The schedule of the Louvre raid, which occurred between morning hours local time, was typical of recent thefts, Stürmann said. “It's logical why thefts tend to happen at either start or end of day. Frequently when guards change their shifts and prior to the museum is full of visitors who effectively act as additional security staff.”

Advances in technology may have introduced new devices that can raise the alarm more rapidly and effectively, but it has also provided thieves new methods with which to bypass protections. In the city, the thieves accessed the museum’s first-floor window with a vehicle-mounted ladder and cut through a glass pane with a battery-powered disc cutter.

An author said the discussion in the country about the historic building had primarily focused on crowd control in recent years, and not as much on protection.

The museum has an on-site team of about 50 full-time firefighters, but their mission is mainly to protect the artworks from blazes and flooding. “There isn't a quick reaction team,” Sciolino said. “In the end, the security of the Louvre all comes down to government support and money, and currently France lacks sufficient money.”