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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 disappearing into the city traffic on humble scooters may seem like the boldest of crimes, executed for international notoriety and ensuing Hollywood film treatments.

Specialists who observe patterns in global cultural theft, however, see the recent robbery at the Louvre as something more prosaic: the latest in a series of quick-hit thefts focused more on the material value of valuable gems or materials than the historical importance, continuing a pattern that has appeared over the last decade in Europe, the UK and the US. The venue, they propose, would have been of lesser importance to the thieves.

“You may ask why thieves who want to take valuable jewellery are entering a globally renowned museum rather than a luxury jewelry store,” said an expert in art recovery. “The answer is simple: it’s because nowadays a high-end boutique is more secure.”

A spate of aggressive jewellery shop thefts mean that many outlets have strengthened their security in the past few years, with security personnel on their premises and wares no longer shown overnight. Museums, on the other hand, look vulnerable, partly because of the in-built reason of being public-facing institutions in older structures, and partly the financial situation in many developed nations.

“Since Covid, governments across the world have reduced spending on police and the arts funding,” said Marinello. “If thieves can get into the Louvre, it shows how vulnerable our institutions have become. This is a difficult time to be a museum.”

The theft of the objects – featuring necklaces made up of eight sapphires and hundreds of gems, the crown of Empress Eugénie featuring thousands of diamonds and a hugely valuable crown once possessed by Napoleon III’s wife that the thieves dropped by the street on their way out – has naturally drawn comparisons with the 1911 theft of the famous painting from the Louvre, carried out by the Italian handyman Vincenzo Peruggia.

Better comparisons may be the 2019 burglary of valuables from a German institution worth over millions, the theft of a £4.75m gold toilet from Blenheim Palace the same year, the 2017 robbery of a large gold coin from a European museum or even a spate of robberies of sports memorabilia from US mining museums.

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

If the items were to remain intact, experts say, the criminals would find it hard to sell them. “There’s no way to sell 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 would be immediately recognised, especially given the Ministry of Culture has published photos of the pieces. Even a private collector or an sales venue would want to see documentation confirming legal possession before handling such striking pieces.”

In the previous years, institutions were often reluctant to announce publicly about the loss of famous art pieces and would remain quiet out of shame. These days, as cultural robberies are more widely publicised, the storage and selling of stolen art is dangerous for any lawbreaker.

“Taking a Picasso, it has to remain intact or it becomes worthless, and you have to devise a scheme to keep it in hiding, perhaps by passing it around difficult criminal actors,” said Marinello. “There's ongoing risk to the danger of an accomplice informing authorities to cash in a ransom.”

For similar reasons, an investigator said it was vanishingly unlikely that the robbery had been ordered. “Stolen to order is something from films,” he said. “Nobody would touch this. It’s all around the world and in all the media. If you acquire these, if you are apprehended, you go to jail. You cannot show it to your friends, you cannot leave it to your children.”

Altering stolen works by dismantling or re-cutting does lower the worth. When it comes to gems, it also comes with considerable risk because contemporary cutting techniques give gems a larger and brighter appearance, and antique-cut stones would either draw unwanted attention or reduce value for a concealment.

Importantly, however, dismantling or re-cutting removes the evidence of the theft. “My guess is that the Louvre thieves will try to take the stolen goods to locations with gem knowledge like Israel, another nation or even as nearby as a city, and locate an expert to remove the stones,” suggested Marinello.

The robbery at the Louvre has already raised questions about protective steps at the institution, with a unauthorized state auditor report expected to be published next month criticising “considerable” and “ongoing” delays in modernizing systems and observing that surveillance were missing in multiple areas. But security experts say showing precious items in older structures with a constant flow of guests comes with dangers that are not possible to remove entirely.

“Older structures are much harder to secure,” said an art crime professor. “They often have large accessible windows that makes it easy for criminals to escape, and there may be preservation laws in place that mean you can’t fit them with secure windows.”

The best security systems for buildings should be designed “like a fortress”, said a security advisor. “There should be multiple levels to repel intruders.”

Modern buildings are fitted with state-of-the-art external CCTV cameras or integrated seismic detectors that alert about a broken glass in real time, but old museums may be hesitant to alter their exteriors. Detection devices can be hard to install to decorated surfaces. Motion and sound detectors may also have to be disabled during the day as hordes of visitors stomp 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 robberies tend to happen at either opening or closing times. It’s often when guards change their shifts and prior to the museum is full of visitors who actually act as additional security staff.”

Technological progress may have introduced new devices that can raise the alarm more rapidly and efficiently, but it has also provided robbers new methods with which to circumvent protections. In Paris, the robbers reached the museum’s first-floor window with a vehicle-mounted ladder and breached a glass pane with a battery-powered disc cutter.

Elaine Sciolino said the discussion in France about the 232-year-old building had mostly centered on crowd control in recent years, and less on protection.

The institution has an on-site team of about fifty full-time emergency personnel, but their mission is mainly to protect the artworks from fires and flooding. “There is no quick reaction team,” Sciolino said. “In the end, the security of the Louvre all comes down to government support and funding, and currently the nation lacks sufficient money.”