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

Experts who observe trends in global cultural theft, however, see Sunday morning’s robbery at the Louvre as a more practical matter: the latest in a string of quick-hit thefts centered more on the material value of valuable gems or materials than the historical importance, perpetuating a trend that has appeared over the last decade in Europe, the UK and the US. The location, they propose, would have been of secondary concern to the thieves.

“One might wonder why thieves who want to take valuable jewellery are entering a world-famous museum rather than a luxury jewelry store,” said an expert in art recovery. “It's straightforward: it’s because these days a Cartier store is better protected.”

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

“After the pandemic, governments across the world have reduced spending on police and the arts funding,” said Marinello. “With criminals entering the Louvre, it demonstrates how at risk our institutions have become. This is a horrible time to be a museum.”

The robbery of the items – featuring necklaces made up of precious stones and 631 diamonds, the tiara of Empress Eugénie featuring 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 been compared with the historical theft of the Mona Lisa from the same museum, carried out by the worker the thief.

More relevant comparisons may be the 2019 burglary of jewellery from Dresden’s Green Vault Museum worth over €113m, the theft of a multi-million pound gold toilet from a UK landmark the that year, the 2017 robbery of a valuable item from Berlin’s Bode Museum or even a series of robberies of collector items from American institutions.

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

If the items were to stay whole, specialists say, the criminals would find it hard to find a buyer. “There’s no way to sell something as immediately identifiable as the museum's gems on the legal marketplace”, commented Lynda Albertson of the Association for Research into Crimes against Art.

“They are too well-known, particularly given the Ministry of Culture has published photos of the pieces. Even a private collector or an auction house would want to see paperwork establishing legal possession before touching such remarkable pieces.”

In the past, institutions were often hesitant to go public about the loss of well-known art pieces and would remain quiet out of shame. Now, as cultural robberies are more widely publicised, the keeping and selling of taken items is risky business for any criminal.

“If you steal a famous painting, it has to stay complete or it becomes valueless, and you have to devise a scheme to conceal it, maybe by passing it around dangerous individuals,” said Marinello. “And you’re constantly exposed to the danger of an accomplice informing authorities to collect a reward.”

For comparable factors, an art detective said it was highly improbable that the theft had been commissioned. “Stolen to order is something from films,” he said. “No one would handle these items. It's global news and in all the media. If you acquire these, if you are apprehended, you go to jail. You cannot show it to your acquaintances, you cannot bequeath it to your family.”

Modifying stolen works by dismantling or reshaping does lower the value. When it comes to gems, it also comes with considerable risk because contemporary cutting techniques give gems a bigger and lighter appearance, and antique-cut stones would either attract notice or reduce value for a concealment.

Importantly, however, melting down or re-cutting eliminates the proof of the crime. “My guess is that the robbers will try to take the stolen goods to locations with diamond expertise like a country, India or even as close as Antwerp, and find someone to remove the stones,” said Marinello.

The robbery at the Louvre has already brought up concerns about protective steps at the institution, with a unauthorized official review expected to be released next month pointing out “significant” and “persistent” slow progress in modernizing systems and noting that security cameras were missing in multiple areas. But specialists 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 much harder to secure,” explained Erin Thompson. “They often have large accessible windows that allows for criminals to escape, and there may be preservation laws in place that mean you are unable to install them with secure windows.”

The best security systems for structures should be conceptualised “as a stronghold”, noted a security advisor. “There should be several layers to deter intruders.”

Modern buildings are equipped with state-of-the-art external CCTV cameras or in-built seismic detectors that alert about a broken glass in real time, but old museums may be hesitant to alter their exteriors. Laser scanners can be difficult to fit to decorated surfaces. Motion and sound detectors may also have to be disabled during the day as hordes of visitors walk through a museum.

The timing of the robbery, which took place between morning hours in Paris, was common of recent thefts, Stürmann said. “There’s a good reason why thefts tend to happen at either opening or closing times. It’s often when security rotate and prior to the museum is full of visitors who actually act as extra protection.”

Advances in technology may have introduced new gadgets that can raise the alarm more rapidly and efficiently, but it has also provided thieves new methods with which to circumvent security measures. In Paris, 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 France about the historic building had primarily centered on crowd control in recent years, and not as much on protection.

The museum has an in-house brigade of about 50 permanent firefighters, but their purpose is mostly to protect the artworks from fires and flooding. “There is no quick reaction team,” Sciolino said. “Ultimately, the security of the Louvre all comes down to political will and funding, and currently France lacks sufficient resources.”