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Entering the planet's most popular art institution in broad daylight, grabbing eight pieces of priceless Napoleonic jewellery and vanishing into Paris traffic on simple scooters may seem like the boldest of crimes, executed for international notoriety and subsequent movie adaptations.

Specialists who study trends in international art crime, however, see Sunday morning’s robbery at the Louvre as a more practical matter: the most recent in a string of smash-and-grab thefts centered more on the monetary worth of precious stones or materials than the historical importance, continuing a trend that has emerged over the last decade in Europe, the UK and the US. The venue, they suggest, would have been of secondary concern to the thieves.

“You may ask why criminals who want to steal expensive jewellery are entering a world-famous museum rather than a luxury jewelry store,” stated an expert in art recovery. “It's straightforward: it’s because these days a high-end boutique is more secure.”

A spate of violent retail store thefts indicate that many outlets have beefed up their security in recent years, with security personnel on their locations and wares no longer kept on display overnight. Museums, meanwhile, look more exposed, partly 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 reduced spending on law enforcement and the arts funding,” noted Marinello. “If thieves can get into the Louvre, it shows how vulnerable 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 hundreds of gems, the crown of Empress Eugénie featuring nearly 2,000 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 inevitably drawn comparisons with the historical theft of the Mona Lisa from the Louvre, performed by the Italian handyman the thief.

Better comparisons may be the recent theft of jewellery from a German institution 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 a European museum or even a series of thefts of collector items from US mining museums.

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

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

“They are too well-known, particularly given the Ministry of Culture has published photos of the pieces. Even a individual buyer or an sales venue would want to see documentation establishing proper ownership before handling such striking pieces.”

In the past, institutions were often hesitant to announce publicly about the disappearance of well-known works of art and would stay silent out of shame. These days, as art thefts are more widely publicised, the storage and selling of taken items is risky business for any lawbreaker.

“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, perhaps by passing it around difficult criminal actors,” said Marinello. “And you’re constantly exposed to the danger of an partner telling the police to collect a reward.”

For comparable factors, an investigator said it was vanishingly unlikely that the theft had been commissioned. “Stolen to order is something from Hollywood movies,” he said. “No one would handle these items. It's global news and in all the media. If you buy this, if you get caught, you go to jail. You can't display it to your friends, you cannot bequeath it to your family.”

Modifying taken items by melting down or reshaping does reduce the value. When it comes to diamonds, it also comes with significant danger because modern methods give gems a bigger and brighter appearance, and older-style stones would either draw unwanted attention or reduce value for a coverup.

Importantly, however, dismantling or reshaping removes the proof of the crime. “My guess is that the robbers will try to bring the stolen goods to places with diamond expertise like Israel, 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 institution, with a leaked state auditor report expected to be published next month criticising “considerable” and “persistent” slow progress in updating systems and noting that surveillance were missing in multiple areas. But security experts say displaying precious items in historic buildings with a steady stream of visitors comes with risks that are impossible to eliminate completely.

“Historic buildings are much harder to protect,” explained an art crime professor. “Many of them have nice big street-facing windows that makes it easy for thieves to get away, and there may be preservation laws in place that mean you can’t fit them with secure windows.”

The most solid security systems for buildings should be designed “like a fortress”, said a security advisor. “It should include multiple levels to repel intruders.”

Modern buildings are equipped with advanced external CCTV cameras or integrated vibration sensors that alert about a smashed window in immediately, but historic institutions may be hesitant to uglify their appearance. Detection devices can be hard to install to stuccoed ceilings. Motion and sound detectors may also have to be turned off during the daytime as hordes of visitors stomp through a museum.

The timing of the Louvre raid, which occurred between 9.30am and 9.40am in Paris, was typical of modern robberies, Stürmann said. “There’s a good reason why thefts tend to happen at either opening or closing times. Frequently when security rotate and prior to the museum is full of visitors who actually act as extra protection.”

Advances in technology may have thrown up new devices that can raise the alarm more rapidly and effectively, but it has also provided thieves new methods with which to bypass protections. In the city, the robbers reached the museum’s first-floor window with a vehicle-mounted ladder and breached a glass pane with a electric tool.

An author said the discussion in France about the historic building had mostly focused on crowd control in recent years, and less on security.

The museum has an on-site brigade of about 50 permanent emergency personnel, but their purpose is mostly to safeguard the artworks from fires and flooding. “There isn't a rapid-response unit,” Sciolino said. “Ultimately, the security of the Louvre all comes down to government support and money, and currently the nation lacks sufficient money.”