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Breaking into the world’s most-visited museum in broad daylight, taking eight pieces of priceless 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 Hollywood film treatments.

Experts who observe trends in international art crime, however, see the recent robbery at the Louvre as something more prosaic: the latest in a series of quick-hit thefts centered more on the monetary worth of precious stones or metals than the historical importance, continuing a trend that has emerged over the last decade in Europe, Britain and the US. The location, they propose, would have been of secondary concern to the thieves.

“One might wonder why thieves who want to steal valuable jewellery are entering a globally renowned museum rather than a luxury jewelry store,” said an expert in art recovery. “It's straightforward: it’s because these days a high-end boutique is more secure.”

A series of aggressive jewellery shop thefts mean that many stores have beefed up their protection in recent years, with security personnel on their premises and wares no longer shown overnight. Cultural institutions, meanwhile, look more exposed, in part because of the inherent reason of being public-facing institutions in historic buildings, and partly the current economic climate in many developed nations.

“Since Covid, authorities across the globe have cut back on police and the arts funding,” said Marinello. “If thieves can get into the Louvre, it shows how at risk our institutions have become. This is a horrible time to be a museum.”

The theft of the objects – featuring necklaces made up of eight sapphires and 631 diamonds, the tiara of a historical figure featuring nearly 2,000 diamonds and a extremely expensive crown once possessed by a royal that the robbers left by the street on their way out – has inevitably been compared with the 1911 theft of the Mona Lisa from the same museum, carried out by the worker Vincenzo Peruggia.

Better points of reference may be the 2019 theft of valuables from Dresden’s Green Vault Museum worth over €113m, the theft of a £4.75m gold toilet from a UK landmark the same year, the 2017 heist of a valuable item from Berlin’s Bode Museum or even a spate of robberies of sports memorabilia from American institutions.

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

If the artefacts were to stay whole, specialists say, the criminals would struggle to find a buyer. “There’s no way to sell something as recognizable as the museum's gems on the legal marketplace”, commented Lynda Albertson of the a relevant organization.

“They would be immediately recognised, particularly given the Ministry of Culture has released images of the items. Even a private collector or an sales venue would want to see paperwork confirming legal possession before touching such remarkable pieces.”

In the previous years, institutions were often hesitant to announce publicly about the disappearance of well-known art pieces and would remain quiet out of embarrassment. Now, as art thefts are more widely publicised, the keeping and selling of taken items is dangerous for any lawbreaker.

“Taking a famous painting, it has to stay complete or it becomes valueless, and you have to conceive of a scheme to keep it in hiding, perhaps by moving it among dangerous individuals,” noted Marinello. “There's ongoing risk to the danger of an partner telling the police to collect 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 all around the world and in all the newspapers. If you acquire these, if you are apprehended, you go to jail. You cannot show it to your acquaintances, you cannot bequeath it to your family.”

Modifying taken items by dismantling or reshaping does lower the worth. When it comes to diamonds, it also comes with significant danger because contemporary cutting techniques give gems a larger and brighter appearance, and antique-cut stones would either attract notice or reduce value for a coverup.

Importantly, however, dismantling or re-cutting removes the evidence of the theft. “I suspect that the Louvre thieves will try to bring the items to places with diamond expertise like a country, another nation or even as close as Antwerp, and find someone to remove the gems,” suggested Marinello.

The heist at the Louvre has already raised questions about protective steps at the museum, with a leaked state auditor report expected to be published next month criticising “significant” and “ongoing” slow progress in updating systems and noting that surveillance were missing in many rooms. But security experts say displaying valuable objects in older structures with a constant flow of guests comes with dangers that are impossible to eliminate completely.

“Historic buildings are more difficult to protect,” said an art crime professor. “Many of them have large accessible windows that allows for criminals to escape, and there may be preservation laws in place that mean you are unable to install them with secure windows.”

The best protective measures for structures should be conceptualised “as a stronghold”, noted Peter Stürmann. “It should include several layers to deter attackers.”

Contemporary structures are fitted with advanced surveillance systems or in-built seismic detectors that alert about a broken glass in real time, but historic institutions may be hesitant to uglify their exteriors. Detection devices can be hard to install to decorated surfaces. Sensors may also have to be turned off during the day as crowds stomp through a museum.

The schedule of the robbery, which took place between morning hours in Paris, was common of recent thefts, Stürmann said. “There’s a good reason why robberies tend to happen at either opening or closing times. Frequently when guards rotate and before the museum is full of visitors who actually act as additional security staff.”

Advances in technology may have thrown up new devices that can raise the alarm more rapidly and effectively, but it has also given robbers new tools with which to bypass protections. In Paris, the robbers accessed the museum’s first-floor window with a vehicle-mounted ladder and cut through a glass pane with a electric tool.

An author said the discussion in France about the historic structure had primarily centered on visitor management in recent years, and not as much on protection.

The institution has an in-house brigade of about 50 permanent emergency personnel, but their mission is mainly to protect the artworks from blazes and flooding. “There is no quick reaction team,” Sciolino said. “In the end, the safety of the Louvre all depends on government support and money, and at present the nation simply has no resources.”