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Entering the planet's most popular museum in broad daylight, taking eight pieces of priceless 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 Hollywood film treatments.

Specialists who observe patterns in international art crime, however, see Sunday morning’s heist at the Louvre as a more practical matter: the latest in a series of quick-hit thefts focused more on the monetary worth of precious stones or materials than the historical importance, continuing a trend that has appeared over the last ten years in Europe, Britain and the US. The location, they suggest, would have been of lesser importance to the criminals.

“You may ask why thieves who want to steal expensive jewellery are entering a world-famous museum rather than a luxury jewelry store,” stated an expert in art recovery. “The answer is simple: it’s because nowadays a Cartier store is better protected.”

A spate of violent jewellery shop thefts indicate that many stores have beefed up their security in the past few years, with security personnel on their locations and merchandise no longer kept on display overnight. Museums, on the other hand, look more exposed, partly because of the in-built factor of being public-facing institutions in historic buildings, and also the current economic climate in many developed nations.

“After the pandemic, authorities across the world have cut back on law enforcement and the arts funding,” 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 theft of the items – including jewelry pieces made up of precious stones and hundreds of gems, the tiara of Empress Eugénie containing nearly 2,000 diamonds and a hugely valuable crown once possessed by a royal that the robbers left by the roadside on their way out – has naturally drawn comparisons with the historical theft of the Mona Lisa from the Louvre, performed by the worker Vincenzo Peruggia.

Better comparisons may be the recent burglary of valuables from Dresden’s Green Vault Museum worth over €113m, the taking of a £4.75m valuable object from Blenheim Palace the same year, the recent robbery of a valuable item from Berlin’s Bode Museum or even a series of thefts of collector items from American institutions.

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

If the artefacts were to remain intact, specialists say, the criminals would struggle to sell them. “There’s no way to sell something as recognizable 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 cultural authorities has released images of the pieces. Even a individual buyer or an sales venue would want to see paperwork confirming proper ownership before touching such striking pieces.”

In the previous years, institutions were often reluctant to announce publicly about the loss of well-known art pieces and would remain quiet out of embarrassment. Now, as art thefts are more reported on, the storage and sale of taken items is dangerous for any criminal.

“Taking a Picasso, it has to remain intact or it becomes valueless, and you have to conceive of a plan to keep it in hiding, perhaps by moving it among difficult criminal actors,” said Marinello. “There's ongoing risk to the danger of an accomplice telling the police to cash in a ransom.”

For comparable factors, an investigator said it was highly improbable that the theft had been ordered. “Stolen to order is something from films,” he said. “Nobody would touch this. It's global news and in all the newspapers. If you buy this, if you are apprehended, you go to jail. You can't display it to your acquaintances, you cannot leave it to your children.”

Modifying stolen works by dismantling or reshaping does lower the worth. When it comes to diamonds, it also comes with considerable risk because contemporary methods give gems a bigger and lighter appearance, and older-style stones would either attract notice or barter the price down for a coverup.

Crucially, however, melting down or reshaping removes the evidence of the theft. “I suspect that the Louvre thieves will try to bring the items to locations with gem knowledge like Israel, another nation or even as close as Antwerp, and locate an expert to remove the gems,” said Marinello.

The robbery at the Louvre has already brought up concerns about protective steps at the museum, with a leaked official review expected to be released next month pointing out “considerable” and “ongoing” slow progress in modernizing equipment and noting that surveillance were missing in multiple areas. But specialists say showing precious items in older structures with a steady stream of guests comes with dangers that are not possible to eliminate completely.

“Historic buildings are much harder to secure,” explained an art crime professor. “They often have large accessible windows that makes it easy for thieves to escape, and there may be preservation laws in place that mean you are unable to install them with proper bulletproof glass.”

The best protective measures for buildings should be designed “as a stronghold”, said a security advisor. “There should be several layers to repel intruders.”

Modern buildings are equipped with state-of-the-art surveillance systems or in-built seismic detectors that alert about a smashed window in immediately, but historic institutions may be hesitant to uglify their exteriors. Detection devices can be hard to fit to stuccoed ceilings. Motion and sound detectors may also have to be disabled during the day as hordes of visitors walk through a museum.

The schedule of the robbery, which took place between morning hours in Paris, was typical of modern robberies, Stürmann said. “It's logical 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.”

Technological progress may have introduced new devices that can raise the alarm more rapidly and effectively, but it has also given thieves new methods with which to bypass security measures. In the city, the robbers accessed the museum’s upper level with a vehicle-mounted ladder and breached a glass pane with a electric tool.

An author said the conversation in the country about the 232-year-old structure had mostly focused on visitor management in the past decade, and less on security.

The museum has an in-house brigade of about 50 permanent emergency personnel, but their purpose is mostly to protect the collection from blazes and flooding. “There is no quick reaction team,” Sciolino said. “Ultimately, the safety of the Louvre all depends on political will and funding, and currently the nation lacks sufficient money.”