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Entering the planet's most popular museum in broad daylight, grabbing eight pieces of priceless historical gems and vanishing into Paris traffic on simple scooters may seem like the boldest of crimes, carried out for international notoriety and subsequent movie adaptations.

Specialists who observe trends in international art crime, however, see the recent heist at the Louvre as something more prosaic: the latest in a string of smash-and-grab thefts centered more on the material value of valuable gems or materials than the historical importance, perpetuating a pattern that has emerged over the last ten years in Germany, Britain and the US. The location, they suggest, would have been of secondary concern to the criminals.

“You may ask why thieves who want to take valuable jewellery are breaking into a world-famous museum rather than a Cartier store,” stated an expert in art recovery. “It's straightforward: it’s because nowadays a Cartier store is better protected.”

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

“After the pandemic, authorities across the world have cut back on police and the culture sector,” noted Marinello. “With criminals entering the Louvre, it shows how vulnerable our museums have become. This is a difficult time to be a museum.”

The robbery of the items – including jewelry pieces made up of eight sapphires and 631 diamonds, the crown of Empress Eugénie featuring thousands of diamonds and a extremely expensive crown once possessed by Napoleon III’s wife that the robbers left by the roadside on their way out – has naturally drawn comparisons with the 1911 theft of the famous painting from the same museum, performed by the worker the thief.

Better points of reference may be the 2019 theft of jewellery from Dresden’s Green Vault Museum worth over millions, the theft of a £4.75m gold toilet from Blenheim Palace the same year, the recent robbery of a large gold coin from Berlin’s Bode Museum or even a series 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 items were to stay whole, specialists say, the criminals would struggle to sell them. “There’s no way to sell something as immediately identifiable as the museum's gems on the legal marketplace”, said Lynda Albertson 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 auction house would want to see documentation confirming legal possession before handling such remarkable pieces.”

In the previous years, museums were often reluctant to announce publicly about the disappearance of famous works of art and would stay silent out of shame. Now, as art thefts are more reported on, the keeping and selling of taken items is dangerous for any criminal.

“Taking a Picasso, it has to stay complete or it becomes worthless, and you have to conceive of a scheme to keep it in hiding, maybe by passing it around difficult criminal actors,” noted Marinello. “And you’re constantly exposed to the danger of an accomplice telling the police to cash in a reward.”

For similar reasons, an art detective 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 buy this, if you are apprehended, you end up in prison. You can't display it to your friends, you cannot leave it to your children.”

Modifying stolen works by dismantling or reshaping does lower the worth. When it comes to gems, it also comes with significant danger because contemporary cutting techniques give gems a bigger and lighter appearance, and antique-cut stones would either draw unwanted attention or barter the price down for a coverup.

Importantly, however, melting down or re-cutting eliminates the evidence of the theft. “My guess is that the robbers will try to bring the items to locations with diamond expertise like Israel, another nation or even as nearby as Antwerp, and find someone to remove the gems,” said Marinello.

The heist at the Louvre has already brought up concerns about protective steps at the museum, with a unauthorized official review expected to be published next month pointing out “significant” and “ongoing” slow progress in updating equipment and observing that security cameras were missing in many rooms. But security experts say showing valuable objects in older structures with a steady stream of visitors comes with risks that are impossible to remove entirely.

“Older structures are more difficult to protect,” explained an art crime professor. “They often have large accessible windows that allows 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 protective measures for buildings should be conceptualised “as a stronghold”, said a security advisor. “It should include multiple levels to repel attackers.”

Contemporary structures are equipped with advanced external CCTV cameras or in-built seismic detectors that raise alarm about a smashed window in real time, but old museums may be hesitant to alter their appearance. Laser scanners can be hard to fit to decorated surfaces. Sensors may also have to be disabled during the day as hordes of visitors walk through a museum.

The schedule of the Louvre raid, 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. Frequently when guards change their shifts and prior to the museum is crowded who actually act as additional security staff.”

Advances in technology may have thrown up new gadgets that can raise the alarm more quickly and efficiently, but it has also provided robbers new methods with which to circumvent protections. In Paris, the robbers reached the museum’s first-floor window with a mobile equipment and breached a glass pane with a battery-powered disc cutter.

Elaine Sciolino said the conversation in France about the 232-year-old structure had primarily focused on visitor management in recent years, and not as much on security.

The museum has an on-site brigade of about 50 permanent firefighters, but their mission is mainly to safeguard the artworks from fires and water damage. “There is no quick reaction team,” Sciolino said. “In the end, the security of the Louvre all depends on government support and funding, and currently the nation simply has no resources.”