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Breaking into the planet's most popular museum in broad daylight, taking eight items of invaluable Napoleonic jewellery and disappearing into the city traffic on simple scooters may seem like the boldest of crimes, executed for international notoriety and subsequent Hollywood film treatments.

Experts who study patterns in international art crime, however, see the recent heist at the Louvre as a more practical matter: the latest in a string of smash-and-grab thefts focused more on the monetary worth of precious stones or materials than the artifacts’ significance, perpetuating a trend that has appeared over the last decade in Europe, Britain and the US. The location, they suggest, would have been of secondary concern to the criminals.

“One might wonder why thieves who want to take valuable jewellery are breaking into a globally renowned museum rather than a luxury jewelry store,” stated an expert in art recovery. “It's straightforward: it’s because these days a Cartier store is more secure.”

A series of violent jewellery shop thefts indicate that many outlets have beefed up their protection in the past few years, with armed guards on their locations and wares no longer shown overnight. Cultural institutions, on the other hand, look vulnerable, partly because of the inherent reason of being public-facing institutions in historic buildings, and partly the current economic climate in many western countries.

“Since Covid, authorities across the globe have cut back on police and the culture sector,” noted Marinello. “With criminals entering the Louvre, it demonstrates how at risk our museums have become. This is a horrible time to be a museum.”

The robbery of the items – featuring jewelry pieces made up of eight sapphires and 631 diamonds, the tiara of Empress Eugénie containing nearly 2,000 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 been compared with the historical theft of the famous painting from the Louvre, performed by the Italian handyman Vincenzo Peruggia.

More relevant points of reference may be the 2019 theft of jewellery from a German institution worth over millions, the theft of a multi-million pound valuable object from Blenheim Palace the same year, the recent heist of a large gold coin from a European museum or even a series of robberies of collector items from US mining museums.

“There’s a simple pattern here,” said Marinello. “Break in, take items, and dismantle them as rapidly as possible.”

If the artefacts were to stay whole, specialists say, the thieves would find it hard to sell them. “There’s no way to trade something as recognizable as the museum's gems on the legal marketplace”, said Lynda Albertson of the a relevant organization.

“They would be immediately recognised, especially given the cultural authorities has released images of the pieces. Even a private collector or an sales venue would want to see paperwork confirming legal possession before handling such striking pieces.”

In the previous years, institutions were often reluctant to go public about the loss of well-known works of art and would stay silent out of embarrassment. Now, as cultural robberies are more reported on, the keeping and sale of stolen art is dangerous for any lawbreaker.

“If you steal a Picasso, it has to stay complete or it becomes worthless, and you have to conceive of a scheme to keep it in hiding, perhaps by moving it among difficult criminal actors,” said Marinello. “And you’re constantly exposed to the risk of an accomplice telling the police to collect a reward.”

For similar reasons, an investigator said it was vanishingly unlikely that the robbery had been commissioned. “Stolen to order is something from Hollywood movies,” he said. “Nobody would touch this. 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 friends, you cannot bequeath it to your family.”

Altering taken items by melting down or reshaping does lower the worth. When it comes to gems, it also comes with considerable risk because contemporary methods give gems a larger and lighter surface area, and older-style stones would either attract notice or barter the price down for a concealment.

Importantly, however, melting down or reshaping eliminates the evidence of the theft. “My guess is that the Louvre thieves will try to take the stolen goods to places with diamond expertise like Israel, another nation or even as close as a city, and locate an expert to cut out the stones,” said Marinello.

The robbery at the Louvre has already raised questions about security measures at the museum, with a leaked official review expected to be released soon criticising “considerable” and “ongoing” slow progress in updating systems and observing that security cameras were lacking in many rooms. But security experts say showing valuable objects in historic buildings with a steady stream of visitors comes with dangers that are not possible to eliminate completely.

“Older structures are more difficult to protect,” explained an art crime professor. “Many of them have large accessible windows that makes it easy for thieves to escape, and there may be preservation laws in place that mean you can’t fit them with proper bulletproof glass.”

The most solid protective measures for structures should be designed “like a fortress”, noted Peter Stürmann. “It should include several layers to repel attackers.”

Contemporary structures are equipped with state-of-the-art external CCTV cameras or in-built vibration sensors that raise alarm about a smashed window in real time, but old museums may be hesitant to uglify their exteriors. Detection devices can be difficult to fit to decorated surfaces. Sensors may also have to be disabled during the daytime as hordes of visitors walk through a museum.

The timing of the robbery, which occurred between morning hours in Paris, was common of recent thefts, Stürmann said. “There’s a good reason why robberies tend to happen at either start or end of day. It’s often when security rotate and before the museum is full of visitors who effectively act as extra protection.”

Advances in technology may have introduced new devices that can raise the alarm more quickly and effectively, but it has also given thieves new methods with which to bypass protections. In the city, the thieves accessed the museum’s first-floor window with a mobile equipment and cut through a window with a battery-powered disc cutter.

An author said the discussion in France about the 232-year-old structure had primarily focused on visitor management in the past decade, and less on protection.

The institution has an in-house brigade of about fifty full-time firefighters, but their purpose is mostly to protect the artworks from fires and flooding. “There is no rapid-response unit,” Sciolino said. “In the end, the security of the Louvre all comes down to political will and funding, and at present France lacks sufficient resources.”