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Entering the world’s most-visited museum in broad daylight, taking eight items of invaluable Napoleonic jewellery and disappearing into Paris traffic on humble scooters may seem like the most audacious of crimes, carried out for global fame and ensuing Hollywood film treatments.

Specialists who observe trends in global cultural theft, however, see the recent robbery at the Louvre as something more prosaic: the latest in a string of smash-and-grab thefts focused more on the monetary worth of valuable gems or metals than the artifacts’ significance, continuing a pattern that has emerged over the last ten years in Europe, Britain and the US. The location, they propose, would have been of lesser importance to the thieves.

“You may ask why thieves who want to steal valuable jewellery are breaking into a globally renowned museum rather than a Cartier store,” said an expert in art recovery. “The answer is simple: it’s because these days a Cartier store is better protected.”

A series of aggressive retail store thefts indicate that many outlets have strengthened their security in the past few years, with security personnel on their premises and merchandise no longer kept on display overnight. Museums, meanwhile, 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 developed nations.

“Since Covid, governments across the globe have cut back on police and the culture sector,” said Marinello. “If thieves can get into the Louvre, it demonstrates how vulnerable our institutions have become. This is a horrible time to be a museum.”

The robbery of the objects – featuring jewelry pieces made up of precious stones and hundreds of gems, 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 been compared with the historical theft of the Mona Lisa from the Louvre, performed by the worker the thief.

Better comparisons may be the 2019 burglary of valuables from a German institution worth over €113m, the theft of a multi-million pound gold toilet from a UK landmark the that year, the 2017 heist 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, experts say, the thieves would struggle to sell them. “It's impossible to trade something as recognizable as the Louvre’s jewels on the licit market”, commented Lynda Albertson of the a relevant organization.

“They would be immediately recognised, particularly given the cultural authorities has published photos of the pieces. Even a private collector or an auction house would want to see documentation establishing proper ownership before handling such remarkable pieces.”

In the past, institutions were often reluctant to go public about the disappearance of well-known art pieces and would remain quiet out of shame. These days, as cultural robberies are more widely publicised, the storage and sale of stolen art is risky business for any lawbreaker.

“Taking a famous painting, it has to stay complete or it becomes valueless, and you have to devise a scheme to keep it in hiding, maybe by passing it around difficult criminal actors,” said Marinello. “There's ongoing risk to the danger of an partner informing authorities to collect a reward.”

For comparable factors, an investigator said it was vanishingly unlikely that the robbery had been commissioned. “Commissioned theft is something from films,” he said. “No one would handle these items. It’s all around the world and in all the media. If you buy this, if you get caught, you end up in prison. You cannot show it to your acquaintances, you cannot bequeath it to your family.”

Modifying taken items by melting down or reshaping does lower the worth. When it comes to gems, it also comes with significant danger because modern methods give stones a larger and lighter appearance, 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 robbers will try to bring the stolen goods to locations with gem knowledge like Israel, another nation or even as close as Antwerp, and locate an expert to cut out the stones,” said Marinello.

The heist at the Louvre has already raised questions about security measures at the institution, with a leaked official review expected to be released soon criticising “significant” and “ongoing” delays in modernizing equipment and noting that security cameras were lacking in multiple areas. But specialists say showing valuable objects in older structures with a steady stream of visitors comes with risks that are not possible to remove entirely.

“Historic buildings are more difficult to protect,” explained an art crime professor. “Many of them have large accessible windows that allows for criminals to get away, and there may be building protection statutes in place that mean you can’t fit them with secure windows.”

The most solid protective measures for buildings should be designed “as a stronghold”, noted Peter Stürmann. “There should be multiple levels to repel intruders.”

Modern buildings are equipped with state-of-the-art external CCTV cameras or integrated vibration sensors that alert about a smashed window in real time, but historic institutions may be reluctant to alter their exteriors. Laser scanners can be difficult to fit to stuccoed ceilings. Motion and sound detectors may also have to be turned off during the daytime as crowds stomp through a museum.

The schedule of the Louvre raid, which took place between morning hours local time, was common of recent thefts, Stürmann said. “It's logical why robberies tend to happen at either opening or closing times. It’s often when security rotate and before the museum is full of visitors who effectively 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 security measures. In Paris, the thieves accessed the museum’s first-floor window with a mobile equipment and cut through a glass pane with a battery-powered disc cutter.

Elaine Sciolino said the conversation in the country about the 232-year-old building had primarily focused on visitor management in the past decade, and less on protection.

The museum has an in-house brigade of about 50 permanent firefighters, but their purpose is mainly to safeguard the artworks from fires and flooding. “There is no quick reaction team,” Sciolino said. “In the end, the security of the Louvre all depends on government support and money, and at present France lacks sufficient resources.”