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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 humble scooters may seem like the boldest of crimes, carried out for international notoriety and ensuing Hollywood film treatments.

Experts who observe patterns in global cultural theft, however, see the recent robbery at the Louvre as something more prosaic: the latest in a string of quick-hit thefts focused more on the material value of precious stones or materials than the artifacts’ significance, continuing a pattern that has appeared over the last decade in Europe, Britain and the US. The location, they propose, would have been of secondary concern to the thieves.

“You may ask why thieves who want to steal valuable jewellery are entering a globally renowned museum rather than a luxury jewelry store,” stated an expert in art recovery. “It's straightforward: it’s because these days a high-end boutique is more secure.”

A series of aggressive retail store thefts indicate that many stores have beefed up their protection in the past few years, with armed guards on their locations and wares no longer kept on display overnight. Museums, on the other hand, look more exposed, in part because of the inherent factor of being public-facing institutions in older structures, and also the current economic climate in many western countries.

“Since Covid, authorities across the world have cut back on law enforcement and the arts funding,” noted Marinello. “If thieves can get into 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 – including jewelry pieces made up of precious stones and hundreds of gems, the crown of Empress Eugénie containing nearly 2,000 diamonds and a hugely valuable crown once possessed by Napoleon III’s wife that the robbers dropped by the street on their way out – has inevitably drawn comparisons with the historical theft of the famous painting from the same museum, carried out by the Italian handyman Vincenzo Peruggia.

Better comparisons may be the 2019 theft of valuables from a German institution 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 Berlin’s Bode Museum or even a series of thefts of collector items from American institutions.

“It's a clear trend here,” said Marinello. “Break in, take items, and dismantle them as quickly as possible.”

If the items were to remain intact, specialists say, the thieves would struggle to find a buyer. “It's impossible to trade something as immediately identifiable as the Louvre’s jewels on the licit market”, commented Lynda Albertson of the a relevant organization.

“They would be immediately recognised, particularly given the Ministry of Culture has released images of the pieces. Even a private collector or an auction house would want to see documentation establishing legal possession before handling such remarkable pieces.”

In the previous years, institutions were often reluctant to announce publicly about the disappearance of famous art pieces and would stay silent out of shame. Now, as art thefts are more reported on, the keeping and sale of taken items is risky business for any lawbreaker.

“Taking a Picasso, it has to stay complete or it becomes valueless, and you have to devise a plan to keep it in hiding, maybe by passing it around difficult criminal actors,” said Marinello. “There's ongoing risk to the risk of an partner informing authorities to collect a reward.”

For comparable factors, an art detective said it was vanishingly unlikely that the theft had been ordered. “Stolen to order is something from films,” he said. “Nobody would touch this. It's global news and in all the media. If you acquire these, if you get caught, you end up in prison. You cannot show it to your friends, you cannot leave it to your family.”

Modifying stolen works by dismantling or re-cutting does reduce the value. When it comes to gems, it also comes with considerable risk because contemporary methods give gems a larger and brighter surface area, and antique-cut stones would either attract notice or reduce value for a concealment.

Crucially, however, dismantling or re-cutting eliminates the proof of the crime. “I suspect that the Louvre thieves will try to bring the stolen goods to places with gem knowledge like Israel, India or even as close as Antwerp, and find someone to cut out the gems,” suggested Marinello.

The heist at the Louvre has already raised questions about protective steps at the museum, with a unauthorized official review expected to be published next month criticising “considerable” and “persistent” slow progress in modernizing equipment and noting that security cameras were lacking in many rooms. But specialists say showing precious items in historic buildings with a constant flow of guests comes with dangers that are impossible to eliminate completely.

“Historic buildings are more difficult to protect,” said an art crime professor. “They often have nice big street-facing windows that allows for thieves to escape, and there may be building protection statutes in place that mean you can’t fit them with secure windows.”

The most solid protective measures for structures should be conceptualised “as a stronghold”, said a security advisor. “It should include several layers to repel attackers.”

Contemporary structures are equipped with advanced external CCTV cameras or in-built seismic detectors that alert about a smashed window in real time, but old museums may be reluctant to uglify their appearance. Laser scanners can be hard to fit to stuccoed ceilings. Sensors may also have to be disabled during the daytime as hordes of visitors stomp through a museum.

The timing of the Louvre raid, which occurred between morning hours in Paris, was typical of modern robberies, Stürmann said. “There’s a good reason why thefts tend to happen at either start or end of day. Frequently when security change their shifts and prior to the museum is full of visitors who actually act as extra protection.”

Technological progress may have introduced new devices that can raise the alarm more quickly and effectively, but it has also provided robbers new methods with which to circumvent protections. In Paris, the robbers accessed the museum’s upper level with a vehicle-mounted ladder and cut through a glass pane with a electric tool.

Elaine Sciolino said the conversation in the country about the historic building had primarily focused on crowd control in the past decade, and less on protection.

The institution has an in-house brigade of about 50 full-time firefighters, but their mission is mostly to safeguard the collection from blazes and water damage. “There is no quick reaction team,” Sciolino said. “Ultimately, the safety of the Louvre all depends on government support and money, and currently the nation simply has no resources.”