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Entering the world’s most-visited museum in the middle of the day, grabbing eight items of invaluable historical gems and vanishing into Paris traffic on humble scooters may seem like the most audacious of crimes, carried out for international notoriety and subsequent movie adaptations.

Experts who observe trends in international art crime, however, see the recent heist at the Louvre as a more practical matter: the latest in a series of quick-hit thefts focused more on the material value of valuable gems or materials than the artifacts’ significance, continuing a trend that has emerged over the last ten years in Germany, Britain and the US. The location, they propose, would have been of lesser importance to the thieves.

“You may ask why criminals who want to take valuable jewellery are entering a world-famous museum rather than a Cartier store,” stated Christopher A Marinello. “The answer is simple: it’s because nowadays a Cartier store is better protected.”

A spate of aggressive retail store thefts mean that many outlets have beefed up their security in the past few years, with security personnel on their premises and merchandise no longer shown overnight. Cultural institutions, meanwhile, look vulnerable, partly because of the in-built factor of being accessible institutions in historic buildings, and partly the current economic climate in many developed nations.

“Since Covid, governments across the globe have reduced spending on police and the arts funding,” said Marinello. “With criminals entering the Louvre, it shows how at risk our museums have become. This is a difficult time to be a museum.”

The robbery of the items – featuring jewelry pieces made up of precious stones and 631 diamonds, the tiara of Empress Eugénie featuring nearly 2,000 diamonds and a extremely expensive crown once owned by Napoleon III’s wife that the thieves left by the street on their way out – has naturally drawn comparisons with the 1911 theft of the famous painting from the same museum, carried out by the worker Vincenzo Peruggia.

More relevant points of reference may be the recent burglary of valuables from a German institution worth over €113m, the taking of a multi-million pound valuable object from Blenheim Palace the that year, the 2017 robbery of a large gold coin from a European museum or even a series of thefts of sports memorabilia from American institutions.

“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, specialists 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 legal marketplace”, commented an art crime researcher of the Association for Research into Crimes against Art.

“They would be immediately recognised, particularly given the Ministry of Culture has published photos of the items. Even a private collector or an sales venue would want to see paperwork confirming legal possession before handling such striking pieces.”

In the past, museums were often hesitant to announce publicly about the loss of well-known works of art and would stay silent out of embarrassment. These days, as art thefts are more widely publicised, the storage and sale of taken items is risky business for any lawbreaker.

“If you steal a famous painting, it has to remain intact or it becomes worthless, and you have to devise a plan to conceal it, maybe by passing it around difficult criminal actors,” noted Marinello. “There's ongoing risk to the risk of an accomplice informing authorities to cash in a reward.”

For comparable factors, an investigator said it was vanishingly unlikely that the theft had been ordered. “Commissioned theft is something from films,” he said. “Nobody would touch this. It’s all around the world and in all the newspapers. If you buy this, if you are apprehended, you end up in prison. You cannot show it to your friends, you cannot bequeath it to your family.”

Modifying taken items by melting down or reshaping does reduce the value. When it comes to diamonds, it also comes with considerable risk because contemporary cutting techniques give stones a larger and brighter appearance, and older-style stones would either attract notice or reduce value for a concealment.

Crucially, however, melting down or reshaping eliminates the evidence of the crime. “I suspect that the Louvre thieves will try to bring the stolen goods to places with diamond expertise like a country, another nation or even as close as a city, and locate an expert to remove the gems,” suggested Marinello.

The heist at the Louvre has already raised questions about security measures at the museum, with a unauthorized state auditor report expected to be released next month pointing out “considerable” and “ongoing” delays in updating systems and noting that surveillance were lacking in multiple areas. But specialists say showing precious items in older structures with a constant flow of visitors comes with dangers that are impossible to remove entirely.

“Older structures are more difficult to protect,” said an art crime professor. “Many of them have nice big street-facing windows that allows for thieves to escape, and there may be building protection statutes in place that mean you are unable to install them with proper bulletproof glass.”

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

Contemporary structures are equipped with state-of-the-art external CCTV cameras or integrated seismic detectors that alert about a smashed window in real time, but old museums may be hesitant to uglify their appearance. Laser scanners can be hard to fit to decorated surfaces. Sensors may also have to be disabled during the daytime as crowds stomp through a museum.

The schedule of the robbery, which took place between 9.30am and 9.40am in Paris, was common of recent thefts, Stürmann said. “There’s a good reason why thefts tend to happen at either start or end of day. It’s often when guards rotate and before 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 rapidly and efficiently, but it has also provided robbers new methods with which to circumvent protections. In Paris, the thieves accessed the museum’s upper level with a mobile equipment and cut through a window with a battery-powered disc cutter.

An author said the discussion in the country about the 232-year-old structure had primarily centered on visitor management in recent years, and not as much on protection.

The institution has an on-site team of about 50 permanent firefighters, but their purpose is mainly to safeguard the collection from blazes and flooding. “There is no quick reaction team,” Sciolino said. “Ultimately, the safety of the Louvre all comes down to political will and funding, and at present the nation simply has no resources.”