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Entering the planet's most popular art institution in the middle of the day, grabbing eight pieces of priceless Napoleonic jewellery and vanishing into the city traffic on humble scooters may seem like the boldest of crimes, executed for international notoriety and ensuing Hollywood film treatments.

Experts who observe patterns in global cultural theft, however, see Sunday morning’s robbery at the Louvre as a more practical matter: the most recent in a string of smash-and-grab thefts centered more on the monetary worth of precious stones or metals than the artifacts’ significance, perpetuating a trend that has appeared over the last ten years in Europe, Britain and the US. The location, they suggest, would have been of secondary concern to the thieves.

“One might wonder why thieves who want to steal valuable jewellery are breaking into a world-famous museum rather than a Cartier store,” stated an expert in art recovery. “The answer is simple: it’s because these days a Cartier store is better protected.”

A series of violent retail store thefts mean that many stores have strengthened their protection in recent years, with armed guards on their premises and wares no longer kept on display overnight. Museums, meanwhile, look vulnerable, partly because of the inherent reason of being accessible institutions in older structures, and also the current economic climate in many western countries.

“Since Covid, authorities across the world have reduced spending on police and the culture sector,” noted Marinello. “If thieves can get into the Louvre, it shows how at risk our museums have become. This is a difficult time to be a museum.”

The theft of the items – featuring necklaces made up of eight sapphires 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 left by the roadside on their way out – has inevitably been compared with the historical theft of the Mona Lisa from the Louvre, performed by the worker Vincenzo Peruggia.

Better points of reference may be the 2019 burglary of jewellery from Dresden’s Green Vault Museum worth over €113m, the taking of a multi-million pound valuable object from a UK landmark the same year, the 2017 robbery of a large gold coin from a European museum or even a series of thefts of sports memorabilia from US mining museums.

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

If the items were to stay whole, experts say, the thieves would find it hard to find a buyer. “There’s no way to sell something as recognizable as the Louvre’s jewels on the licit market”, said an art crime researcher of the Association for Research into Crimes against Art.

“They are too well-known, especially 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 striking pieces.”

In the previous years, museums were often hesitant to go public about the disappearance of well-known works of art and would stay silent out of embarrassment. Now, as art thefts are more reported on, the keeping and sale of stolen art is risky business for any lawbreaker.

“If you steal a Picasso, it has to remain intact 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 partner telling the police to cash in a ransom.”

For comparable factors, an art detective said it was vanishingly unlikely that the robbery had been ordered. “Stolen to order is something from Hollywood movies,” he said. “No one would handle these items. It’s all around the world and in all the media. If you acquire these, if you get caught, you go to jail. You cannot show it to your acquaintances, you cannot leave it to your family.”

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

Importantly, however, melting down or re-cutting eliminates the evidence of the crime. “I suspect that the Louvre thieves will try to bring the items to places with gem knowledge like a country, India or even as close as a city, and find someone to cut out the stones,” said Marinello.

The heist at the Louvre has already raised questions about protective steps at the institution, with a unauthorized official review expected to be released soon pointing out “significant” and “ongoing” slow progress in modernizing equipment and noting that security cameras were lacking in multiple areas. But security experts say displaying precious items in historic buildings with a steady stream of guests comes with risks that are impossible to eliminate completely.

“Older structures are more difficult to secure,” explained Erin Thompson. “Many of them have large accessible windows that makes it easy for thieves to get away, and there may be building protection statutes in place that mean you are unable to install them with secure windows.”

The most solid protective measures for structures should be designed “as a stronghold”, said Peter Stürmann. “It should include multiple levels to deter attackers.”

Modern buildings are equipped with advanced external CCTV cameras or in-built seismic detectors that alert about a smashed window in immediately, but old museums may be reluctant to alter their exteriors. Laser scanners can be hard to fit to decorated surfaces. Sensors may also have to be turned off during the daytime as hordes of visitors walk through a museum.

The schedule of the Louvre raid, which took place between 9.30am and 9.40am local time, was typical of modern robberies, Stürmann said. “It's logical why thefts tend to happen at either opening or closing times. Frequently when guards rotate and before the museum is full of visitors who actually act as additional security staff.”

Advances in technology may have introduced new devices that can raise the alarm more quickly and efficiently, but it has also provided thieves new tools 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 window with a battery-powered disc cutter.

An author said the discussion 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 in-house team of about 50 full-time firefighters, but their mission is mostly to protect the artworks from fires and water damage. “There isn't a rapid-response unit,” Sciolino said. “Ultimately, the security of the Louvre all depends on political will and money, and currently the nation simply has no resources.”