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Entering the world’s most-visited museum in broad daylight, taking eight items of invaluable Napoleonic jewellery and vanishing into the city traffic on humble scooters may seem like the boldest of crimes, carried out for international notoriety and subsequent Hollywood film treatments.

Specialists who study trends in international art crime, however, see the recent robbery at the Louvre as something more prosaic: the most recent in a series of quick-hit thefts centered more on the material value of precious stones or materials than the artifacts’ significance, perpetuating a trend that has emerged over the last decade in Europe, the UK and the US. The venue, they suggest, would have been of lesser importance to the criminals.

“You may ask why criminals who want to take expensive jewellery are entering a world-famous museum rather than a luxury jewelry store,” said Christopher A Marinello. “The answer is simple: it’s because these days a Cartier store is more secure.”

A series of aggressive jewellery shop thefts mean that many outlets have beefed up their protection in the past few years, with armed guards on their locations and merchandise no longer kept on display overnight. Museums, meanwhile, look more exposed, in part because of the in-built factor of being accessible institutions in older structures, and partly the current economic climate in many western countries.

“After the pandemic, authorities across the globe have cut back on law enforcement and the culture sector,” 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 robbery of the items – including jewelry pieces made up of precious stones and 631 diamonds, the crown of a historical figure containing thousands of diamonds and a hugely valuable crown once owned by Napoleon III’s wife that the robbers dropped by the street on their way out – has inevitably been compared with the 1911 theft of the famous painting from the Louvre, carried out by the worker the thief.

Better points of reference may be the 2019 burglary of jewellery from a German institution worth over €113m, the taking of a multi-million pound gold toilet from Blenheim Palace the same year, the recent robbery of a valuable item from a European museum or even a spate of robberies of sports memorabilia from US mining museums.

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

If the items were to stay whole, specialists say, the criminals would find it hard to find a buyer. “There’s no way to sell something as recognizable as the museum's gems on the licit market”, commented an art crime researcher of the Association for Research into Crimes against Art.

“They are too well-known, particularly given the cultural authorities has released images of the pieces. Even a private collector or an sales venue would want to see paperwork establishing proper ownership before touching such remarkable pieces.”

In the past, institutions were often hesitant to go public about the disappearance of well-known works of art and would stay silent out of shame. These days, as cultural robberies are more widely publicised, the storage and sale of taken items is dangerous for any criminal.

“If you steal a famous painting, it has to remain intact or it becomes worthless, and you have to conceive of a plan to keep it in hiding, maybe by moving it among difficult criminal actors,” said Marinello. “And you’re constantly exposed to the risk of an accomplice informing authorities to collect a ransom.”

For similar reasons, 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 acquire these, if you are apprehended, you end up in prison. You can't display it to your friends, you cannot bequeath it to your family.”

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

Crucially, however, melting down or re-cutting removes the proof of the theft. “I suspect that the Louvre thieves will try to take the items to locations with gem knowledge like Israel, India or even as close as a city, and find someone to remove the gems,” suggested Marinello.

The robbery at the Louvre has already raised questions about protective steps at the institution, with a leaked state auditor report expected to be released next month pointing out “significant” and “ongoing” slow progress in modernizing systems and observing that surveillance were missing in multiple areas. But security experts say displaying valuable objects in older structures with a constant flow of guests comes with dangers that are not possible to remove entirely.

“Historic buildings are more difficult to protect,” explained an art crime professor. “Many of them have nice big street-facing windows that makes it easy for criminals to escape, and there may be preservation laws in place that mean you are unable to install them with secure windows.”

The most solid protective measures for buildings should be conceptualised “as a stronghold”, said Peter Stürmann. “It should include multiple levels to repel intruders.”

Contemporary structures are fitted with advanced external CCTV cameras or integrated seismic detectors that raise alarm about a smashed window in immediately, but historic institutions 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 disabled during the daytime as crowds walk through a museum.

The timing of the Louvre raid, which occurred between morning hours in Paris, was typical of recent thefts, Stürmann said. “There’s a good reason why robberies tend to happen at either opening or closing times. It’s often when guards change their shifts and prior to the museum is full of visitors who effectively act as extra protection.”

Advances in technology may have introduced new devices that can raise the alarm more quickly and effectively, but it has also given thieves new tools with which to circumvent protections. In the city, the robbers accessed the museum’s first-floor window with a mobile equipment and cut through a window with a electric tool.

Elaine Sciolino said the discussion in the country about the 232-year-old building had mostly focused on crowd control in the past decade, and not as much on protection.

The institution has an in-house brigade of about fifty full-time firefighters, but their purpose is mainly to safeguard the artworks from fires and water damage. “There isn't a rapid-response unit,” Sciolino said. “In the end, the safety of the Louvre all depends on political will and funding, and currently the nation simply has no resources.”