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Entering the planet's most popular museum in the middle of the day, grabbing eight items of invaluable Napoleonic jewellery and vanishing into the city traffic on humble scooters may seem like the boldest of crimes, carried out for international notoriety and subsequent Hollywood film treatments.

Experts who study trends in global cultural theft, however, see Sunday morning’s robbery at the Louvre as something more prosaic: the most recent in a string of smash-and-grab thefts centered more on the monetary worth of precious stones or metals than the historical importance, continuing a pattern that has appeared over the last ten years in Germany, the UK and the US. The location, they propose, would have been of secondary concern to the criminals.

“You may ask why criminals 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 these days a high-end boutique is better protected.”

A series of aggressive retail store thefts mean that many stores have strengthened their security in recent years, with security personnel 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 historic buildings, and partly the current economic climate in many western countries.

“After the pandemic, governments across the globe have cut back on police and the culture sector,” noted 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 theft of the items – including necklaces made up of eight sapphires and 631 diamonds, the tiara of a historical figure containing thousands of diamonds and a hugely valuable crown once owned by a royal that the thieves left by the roadside 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 the thief.

Better points of reference may be the recent burglary of valuables from a German institution worth over millions, the theft of a multi-million pound gold toilet from Blenheim Palace the same year, the 2017 robbery of a valuable item from Berlin’s Bode Museum or even a spate of robberies of sports memorabilia from US mining museums.

“It's a clear trend here,” explained Marinello. “Smash, grab, and melt it down as rapidly as possible.”

If the artefacts were to remain intact, specialists say, the thieves would struggle to find a buyer. “There’s no way to sell something as immediately identifiable as the Louvre’s jewels on the legal marketplace”, said an art crime researcher of the a relevant organization.

“They are too well-known, particularly given the Ministry of Culture has published photos of the pieces. Even a individual buyer or an sales venue would want to see documentation establishing proper ownership before handling such striking pieces.”

In the previous years, institutions were often reluctant to go public about the loss of famous art pieces and would remain quiet out of shame. These days, as art thefts are more reported on, the keeping and sale of taken items is risky business for any lawbreaker.

“If you steal a famous painting, it has to stay complete or it becomes worthless, and you have to devise a scheme to keep it in hiding, perhaps by moving it among dangerous individuals,” said Marinello. “There's ongoing risk to the danger of an partner telling the police to collect a reward.”

For similar reasons, an investigator said it was highly improbable that the theft had been commissioned. “Commissioned theft is something from Hollywood movies,” he said. “No one would handle these items. It’s all around the world and in all the newspapers. If you acquire these, if you are apprehended, you end up in prison. You can't display it to your acquaintances, you cannot bequeath it to your children.”

Modifying taken items by dismantling or re-cutting does lower the value. When it comes to diamonds, it also comes with significant danger because contemporary cutting techniques give stones a larger and lighter surface area, and antique-cut stones would either attract notice or barter the price down for a concealment.

Crucially, however, melting down or re-cutting removes the proof of the crime. “I suspect that the robbers will try to take the stolen goods to places with gem knowledge like a country, 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 protective steps at the museum, with a unauthorized state auditor report expected to be released next month pointing out “significant” and “ongoing” delays in updating systems and noting that security cameras were missing in many rooms. But security experts say showing valuable objects in historic buildings with a constant flow of visitors comes with risks that are not possible to remove entirely.

“Older structures are more difficult to secure,” said an art crime professor. “They often have large accessible windows that makes it easy for thieves to escape, and there may be building protection statutes in place that mean you can’t fit them with secure windows.”

The best security systems for structures should be conceptualised “like a fortress”, noted Peter Stürmann. “There should be several layers to repel intruders.”

Contemporary structures are fitted with advanced external CCTV cameras or integrated seismic detectors that raise alarm about a smashed window in real time, but historic institutions may be reluctant to uglify their exteriors. Laser scanners can be hard 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 Louvre raid, which took place between morning hours local time, was common of modern robberies, Stürmann said. “It's logical why thefts tend to happen at either start or end of day. Frequently when security rotate and before the museum is crowded who actually act as extra protection.”

Technological progress may have thrown up new gadgets that can raise the alarm more quickly and efficiently, but it has also given thieves new methods with which to circumvent protections. In the city, the thieves accessed the museum’s first-floor window with a vehicle-mounted ladder and breached a glass pane with a battery-powered disc cutter.

An author said the discussion in France about the historic building had primarily centered on crowd control in recent years, and less on security.

The institution has an in-house brigade of about 50 full-time emergency personnel, but their mission is mainly to protect the artworks from fires and flooding. “There is no rapid-response unit,” Sciolino said. “Ultimately, the security of the Louvre all depends on political will and funding, and currently France simply has no resources.”