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Entering the planet's most popular museum in broad daylight, grabbing eight pieces of priceless historical gems and vanishing into the city traffic on humble scooters may seem like the boldest of crimes, carried out for international notoriety and subsequent movie adaptations.

Specialists who study trends in global cultural theft, however, see Sunday morning’s heist at the Louvre as a more practical matter: the most recent in a series of quick-hit thefts centered more on the monetary worth of precious stones or metals than the historical importance, continuing a trend that has emerged over the last decade in Europe, the UK and the US. The venue, they suggest, would have been of lesser importance to the thieves.

“One might wonder why thieves who want to take expensive 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 Cartier store is better protected.”

A spate of violent jewellery shop thefts indicate that many outlets have beefed up their security in recent years, with security personnel on their locations and merchandise no longer shown overnight. Museums, meanwhile, look vulnerable, 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 globe have reduced spending on law enforcement and the arts funding,” said Marinello. “With criminals entering the Louvre, it shows how at risk our museums have become. This is a horrible time to be a museum.”

The robbery of the objects – featuring jewelry pieces made up of eight sapphires and 631 diamonds, the crown 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 roadside on their way out – has inevitably been compared with the 1911 theft of the famous painting from the Louvre, carried out by the worker the thief.

More relevant comparisons may be the 2019 burglary of jewellery from Dresden’s Green Vault Museum worth over millions, the theft of a multi-million pound valuable object from a UK landmark the same year, the recent robbery of a valuable item from Berlin’s Bode Museum or even a spate of thefts of collector items from US mining museums.

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

If the artefacts were to stay whole, experts say, the thieves would find it hard to find a buyer. “There’s no way to trade 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 released images of the pieces. Even a individual buyer or an auction house would want to see paperwork establishing proper ownership before handling such remarkable pieces.”

In the previous years, institutions were often reluctant to announce publicly about the loss of well-known art pieces 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 lawbreaker.

“Taking a famous painting, it has to stay complete or it becomes valueless, and you have to devise a plan to keep it in hiding, perhaps by moving it among dangerous individuals,” noted Marinello. “And you’re constantly exposed to the danger of an accomplice informing authorities to cash in a reward.”

For similar reasons, an investigator said it was highly improbable that the robbery had been commissioned. “Stolen to order is something from Hollywood movies,” he said. “No one would handle these items. It's global news and in all the newspapers. If you acquire these, if you get caught, you go to jail. You can't display it to your acquaintances, you cannot bequeath it to your family.”

Altering stolen works by melting down or re-cutting does lower the value. When it comes to gems, it also comes with significant danger because modern methods give stones a larger and brighter surface area, and antique-cut stones would either draw unwanted attention or reduce value for a coverup.

Crucially, however, dismantling or reshaping eliminates the evidence of the theft. “My guess is that the Louvre thieves will try to bring the stolen goods to places with gem knowledge like Israel, another nation or even as close as Antwerp, and locate an expert to remove the stones,” suggested Marinello.

The heist at the Louvre has already brought up concerns about security measures at the museum, with a leaked official review expected to be released soon pointing out “significant” and “persistent” slow progress in updating equipment and noting that security cameras were lacking in many rooms. But specialists say displaying precious items in older structures with a steady stream of visitors comes with risks that are impossible to eliminate completely.

“Historic buildings are much harder to protect,” explained Erin Thompson. “Many of them have nice big street-facing windows that allows for criminals to escape, and there may be preservation laws in place that mean you can’t fit them with secure windows.”

The most solid security systems for structures should be designed “like a fortress”, noted a security advisor. “There should be multiple levels to deter attackers.”

Contemporary structures are fitted with state-of-the-art external CCTV cameras or integrated seismic detectors that raise alarm about a broken glass in immediately, but historic institutions may be reluctant to uglify their exteriors. Laser scanners can be difficult to fit to stuccoed ceilings. Motion and sound detectors may also have to be disabled during the day as crowds 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. It’s often when guards change their shifts and prior to the museum is crowded who actually act as additional security staff.”

Technological progress may have thrown up new devices that can notify more quickly and effectively, but it has also given thieves new tools with which to bypass protections. In Paris, the thieves accessed the museum’s first-floor window with a mobile equipment and cut through a glass pane with a battery-powered disc cutter.

An author said the conversation in the country about the 232-year-old building had mostly centered on visitor management in the past decade, and not as much on security.

The museum has an on-site brigade of about fifty full-time firefighters, but their mission is mostly to protect the collection from blazes and flooding. “There isn't a quick reaction team,” Sciolino said. “Ultimately, the security of the Louvre all comes down to government support and money, and at present the nation lacks sufficient resources.”