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Breaking into the world’s most-visited art institution 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, carried out for international notoriety and subsequent Hollywood film treatments.

Experts who study trends in international art crime, however, see Sunday morning’s robbery at the Louvre as something more prosaic: the most recent in a string of quick-hit thefts focused more on the material value of valuable gems or materials than the historical importance, continuing a pattern that has appeared over the last decade in Europe, the UK and the US. The venue, they suggest, would have been of lesser importance to the thieves.

“You may ask why criminals who want to steal valuable jewellery are breaking into 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 better protected.”

A series of violent retail store thefts mean that many outlets have beefed up their security in recent years, with security personnel on their locations and wares no longer shown overnight. Cultural institutions, meanwhile, look vulnerable, in part because of the inherent factor of being public-facing institutions in historic buildings, 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. “With criminals entering the Louvre, it shows how at risk our institutions have become. This is a difficult time to be a museum.”

The theft of the items – including jewelry pieces made up of precious stones and 631 diamonds, the crown of a historical figure featuring nearly 2,000 diamonds and a hugely valuable crown once owned by Napoleon III’s wife that the thieves dropped by the roadside on their way out – has naturally been compared with the 1911 theft of the Mona Lisa from the same museum, performed by the Italian handyman the thief.

Better points of reference may be the 2019 theft of jewellery from a German institution worth over millions, the taking of a multi-million pound valuable object from a UK landmark the that year, the recent heist of a large gold coin from Berlin’s Bode Museum or even a series of robberies of sports memorabilia from American institutions.

“There’s a simple pattern here,” said Marinello. “Smash, grab, and melt it down as quickly as possible.”

If the artefacts were to remain intact, experts say, the thieves would find it hard to find a buyer. “It's impossible 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 items. Even a individual buyer or an sales venue would want to see documentation confirming legal possession before touching such striking pieces.”

In the previous years, museums were often reluctant to announce publicly about the loss of famous works of art and would stay silent out of shame. These days, as cultural robberies are more reported on, the keeping 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 devise a scheme to conceal it, maybe by passing it around dangerous individuals,” noted Marinello. “There's ongoing risk to the risk of an accomplice informing authorities to cash in a reward.”

For comparable factors, an investigator said it was vanishingly unlikely that the robbery had been commissioned. “Stolen to order is something from films,” he said. “Nobody would touch this. It’s all around the world and in all the newspapers. If you acquire these, if you get caught, you end up in prison. You cannot show it to your acquaintances, you cannot bequeath it to your family.”

Modifying stolen works by melting down or reshaping does reduce the value. When it comes to gems, it also comes with significant danger because modern cutting techniques give stones a larger and brighter surface area, and older-style stones would either draw unwanted attention or reduce value for a coverup.

Importantly, however, dismantling or re-cutting eliminates the evidence of the theft. “I suspect that the Louvre thieves will try to bring the items to places with gem knowledge like Israel, another nation or even as nearby as a city, and locate an expert to cut out the stones,” suggested Marinello.

The heist at the Louvre has already brought up concerns about security measures at the museum, with a leaked state auditor report expected to be published soon pointing out “considerable” and “ongoing” slow progress in modernizing equipment and observing that surveillance were lacking in multiple areas. But specialists say showing valuable objects in historic buildings with a steady stream of visitors comes with risks that are impossible to eliminate completely.

“Older structures are more difficult to secure,” explained Erin Thompson. “They often have large accessible windows that allows for thieves to get away, and there may be preservation laws in place that mean you can’t fit them with proper bulletproof glass.”

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

Contemporary structures are equipped with state-of-the-art surveillance systems or integrated vibration sensors that raise alarm about a smashed window in real time, but old museums may be hesitant to uglify their exteriors. Laser scanners can be hard to install to decorated surfaces. Sensors may also have to be disabled during the day as crowds stomp 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 robberies 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.”

Technological progress may have thrown up new gadgets that can notify more rapidly and efficiently, but it has also provided thieves new methods with which to bypass protections. In the city, the thieves accessed the museum’s upper level with a mobile equipment and breached a window with a electric tool.

An author said the conversation in France about the 232-year-old structure had mostly centered on crowd control in the past decade, and not as much on protection.

The institution has an on-site team of about 50 permanent firefighters, but their purpose is mainly to safeguard the collection from blazes and water damage. “There is no quick reaction team,” Sciolino said. “Ultimately, the safety of the Louvre all depends on political will and money, and at present France simply has no money.”