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Entering the planet's most popular museum in the middle of the day, grabbing eight items of invaluable historical gems and disappearing into the city traffic on humble scooters may seem like the most audacious of crimes, executed for international notoriety and ensuing movie adaptations.

Experts who study trends in international art crime, however, see Sunday morning’s robbery at the Louvre as something more prosaic: the latest in a string of quick-hit thefts focused more on the material value of precious stones or metals than the artifacts’ significance, continuing a trend that has emerged over the last ten years in Germany, Britain and the US. The venue, they propose, would have been of secondary concern to the thieves.

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

A spate of violent retail store thefts indicate that many stores have strengthened their security in the past few years, with armed guards on their premises and wares no longer shown overnight. Cultural institutions, meanwhile, look vulnerable, partly because of the in-built reason of being public-facing institutions in older structures, and also the current economic climate in many western countries.

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

The theft of the items – featuring necklaces made up of eight sapphires and hundreds of gems, the tiara of a historical figure containing nearly 2,000 diamonds and a extremely expensive crown once possessed by a royal that the thieves left by the street on their way out – has inevitably been compared with the historical theft of the famous painting from the same museum, carried out by the Italian handyman Vincenzo Peruggia.

More relevant points of reference may be the 2019 theft 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 same year, the recent heist of a large gold coin from Berlin’s Bode Museum or even a spate of robberies of sports memorabilia from US mining museums.

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

If the artefacts were to remain intact, specialists say, the criminals would find it hard to sell them. “It's impossible to sell something as immediately identifiable as the museum's gems on the licit market”, commented Lynda Albertson of the Association for Research into Crimes against Art.

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

In the previous years, institutions were often reluctant to go public about the disappearance of well-known art pieces and would stay silent out of shame. Now, as cultural robberies are more widely publicised, the storage and sale of taken items is dangerous for any criminal.

“Taking a famous painting, it has to remain intact or it becomes valueless, and you have to devise a scheme to conceal it, perhaps by passing it around dangerous individuals,” said Marinello. “There's ongoing risk to the risk of an partner telling the police to collect a ransom.”

For comparable factors, an investigator said it was vanishingly unlikely that the theft had been commissioned. “Commissioned theft is something from Hollywood movies,” 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 friends, you cannot leave it to your family.”

Altering taken items by melting down or re-cutting does reduce the worth. When it comes to diamonds, it also comes with considerable risk because contemporary methods give gems a larger and lighter appearance, and antique-cut stones would either attract notice or barter the price down for a concealment.

Crucially, however, melting down or reshaping eliminates the evidence of the theft. “My guess is that the robbers will try to bring the items to locations with gem knowledge like Israel, another nation or even as nearby as Antwerp, and locate an expert to cut out the stones,” suggested Marinello.

The robbery at the Louvre has already brought up concerns about security measures at the museum, with a unauthorized state auditor report expected to be released next month criticising “considerable” and “persistent” delays in modernizing systems and observing that surveillance were lacking in multiple areas. But specialists say showing valuable objects in historic buildings with a steady stream of guests comes with risks 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 allows for thieves to get away, and there may be building protection statutes in place that mean you can’t fit them with proper bulletproof glass.”

The best protective measures for structures should be designed “like a fortress”, said Peter Stürmann. “It should include several layers to deter attackers.”

Contemporary structures are fitted with advanced surveillance systems or integrated vibration sensors that raise alarm about a broken glass in real time, but historic institutions may be reluctant to alter their appearance. Detection devices can be hard to fit to decorated surfaces. Sensors may also have to be disabled during the day as crowds walk through a museum.

The schedule of the robbery, which took place between 9.30am and 9.40am local time, was typical 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 guards rotate 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 notify more rapidly and efficiently, but it has also provided thieves new tools with which to circumvent protections. In the city, the thieves accessed the museum’s first-floor window with a vehicle-mounted ladder and cut through a window with a electric tool.

Elaine Sciolino said the discussion in the country about the 232-year-old structure had primarily centered on visitor management in the past decade, and less on protection.

The museum has an in-house team of about fifty full-time firefighters, but their purpose is mostly to safeguard the artworks from blazes and water damage. “There isn't a quick reaction team,” Sciolino said. “In the end, the safety of the Louvre all comes down to political will and money, and currently France simply has no money.”