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Entering the world’s most-visited art institution in broad daylight, grabbing eight items of invaluable Napoleonic jewellery and vanishing into Paris traffic on simple scooters may seem like the boldest of crimes, carried out for global fame and ensuing movie adaptations.

Specialists who observe patterns in global cultural theft, however, see Sunday morning’s heist at the Louvre as something more prosaic: the latest in a series of quick-hit thefts focused more on the material value of valuable gems or metals than the historical importance, perpetuating a pattern that has appeared over the last decade in Germany, the UK and the US. The venue, they propose, would have been of lesser importance to the thieves.

“You may ask why criminals who want to take valuable jewellery are breaking into a world-famous museum rather than a Cartier store,” stated Christopher A Marinello. “The answer is simple: it’s because these days a high-end boutique is better protected.”

A spate of violent retail store thefts mean that many stores have beefed up their protection in the past few years, with security personnel on their locations and merchandise no longer kept on display overnight. Museums, meanwhile, look vulnerable, in part because of the inherent factor of being public-facing institutions in historic buildings, and partly the financial situation in many developed nations.

“After the pandemic, governments across the world have reduced spending on police and the arts funding,” said Marinello. “If thieves can get into the Louvre, it demonstrates how vulnerable our institutions have become. This is a difficult time to be a museum.”

The robbery of the objects – including necklaces made up of eight sapphires and 631 diamonds, the crown of Empress Eugénie containing nearly 2,000 diamonds and a extremely expensive diadem once owned by Napoleon III’s wife that the thieves dropped by the street on their way out – has naturally drawn comparisons with the historical theft of the Mona Lisa from the same museum, performed by the Italian handyman the thief.

More relevant points of reference may be the 2019 burglary of jewellery from Dresden’s Green Vault Museum worth over millions, the taking of a multi-million pound valuable object from Blenheim Palace the same year, the recent robbery of a large gold coin from a European museum or even a series of thefts of sports memorabilia from American institutions.

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

If the artefacts were to remain intact, 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 licit market”, said an art crime researcher of the a relevant organization.

“They are too well-known, particularly given the Ministry of Culture has published photos of the items. Even a private collector or an sales venue would want to see paperwork confirming proper ownership before handling such remarkable pieces.”

In the previous years, institutions were often hesitant to go public about the loss of famous works of art and would stay silent out of embarrassment. Now, as art thefts are more reported on, the storage and selling of stolen art is risky business for any criminal.

“If you steal a Picasso, it has to stay complete or it becomes valueless, and you have to conceive of a plan to keep it in hiding, maybe by moving it among difficult criminal actors,” said Marinello. “There's ongoing risk to the risk of an partner informing authorities to cash in a ransom.”

For comparable factors, an art detective said it was highly improbable that the theft had been commissioned. “Stolen to order 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 can't display it to your friends, you cannot bequeath it to your family.”

Altering stolen works by melting down or re-cutting does lower the value. When it comes to diamonds, it also comes with significant danger because contemporary methods give stones a bigger and brighter appearance, and older-style stones would either attract notice or reduce value for a concealment.

Crucially, however, dismantling or re-cutting removes the proof of the crime. “I suspect that the Louvre thieves will try to bring the items to locations with diamond expertise like a country, another nation or even as nearby as a city, and locate an expert to cut out the gems,” said Marinello.

The heist at the Louvre has already raised questions about security measures at the museum, with a leaked official review expected to be released soon criticising “significant” and “persistent” delays in updating equipment and observing that security cameras were missing in multiple areas. But security experts say showing precious items in older structures with a constant flow of visitors comes with dangers that are not possible to eliminate completely.

“Historic buildings are more difficult 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 building protection statutes in place that mean you are unable to install them with secure windows.”

The best protective measures for structures should be conceptualised “like a fortress”, noted a security advisor. “It should include several layers to deter intruders.”

Modern buildings are equipped with state-of-the-art surveillance systems or in-built vibration sensors that alert about a broken glass in real time, but old museums may be reluctant to alter their exteriors. Detection devices can be difficult to install to stuccoed ceilings. Motion and sound detectors may also have to be turned off during the day 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 thefts tend to happen at either start or end of day. It’s often when security change their shifts and prior to the museum is full of visitors who effectively act as additional security staff.”

Technological progress may have thrown up new gadgets that can raise the alarm more quickly and efficiently, but it has also given robbers new methods with which to circumvent protections. In Paris, the thieves accessed the museum’s upper level with a mobile equipment and cut through a glass pane with a battery-powered disc cutter.

An author said the conversation in the country about the historic building had primarily centered on visitor management in recent years, and not as much on security.

The museum has an in-house team of about 50 permanent emergency personnel, but their mission is mostly to protect the collection from blazes and water damage. “There isn't a quick reaction team,” Sciolino said. “In the end, the safety of the Louvre all depends on government support and funding, and currently France simply has no money.”