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Entering the planet's most popular art institution in the middle of the day, grabbing eight items of invaluable Napoleonic jewellery and vanishing into Paris traffic on humble scooters may seem like the boldest of crimes, executed for global fame and ensuing Hollywood film treatments.

Specialists who observe trends in international art crime, however, see the recent heist at the Louvre as a more practical matter: the latest in a series of quick-hit thefts focused more on the monetary worth of precious stones or materials than the artifacts’ significance, perpetuating a trend that has appeared over the last decade in Europe, Britain and the US. The venue, they suggest, would have been of secondary concern to the thieves.

“One might wonder why thieves who want to take valuable jewellery are breaking into a globally renowned museum rather than a Cartier store,” said Christopher A Marinello. “The answer is simple: it’s because these days a Cartier store is more secure.”

A series of violent jewellery shop thefts indicate that many stores have strengthened their security in the past few years, with armed guards on their premises and merchandise no longer kept on display overnight. Cultural institutions, meanwhile, look vulnerable, in part because of the inherent reason of being public-facing institutions in historic buildings, and also the financial situation in many developed nations.

“Since Covid, authorities across the world have reduced spending on police and the culture sector,” said Marinello. “With criminals entering the Louvre, it demonstrates how at risk our institutions have become. This is a horrible time to be a museum.”

The theft of the items – featuring jewelry pieces made up of precious stones and 631 diamonds, the crown of Empress Eugénie containing thousands of diamonds and a hugely valuable diadem once possessed by Napoleon III’s wife that the thieves dropped by the street on their way out – has naturally drawn comparisons with the 1911 theft of the famous painting from the Louvre, performed by the worker Vincenzo Peruggia.

More relevant comparisons may be the 2019 theft of valuables from a German institution worth over €113m, the taking of a £4.75m valuable object from a UK landmark the same year, the 2017 robbery of a valuable item from a European museum or even a spate of thefts 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 items were to remain intact, experts say, the thieves would struggle to find a buyer. “There’s no way to trade something as immediately identifiable as the museum's gems on the legal marketplace”, commented an art crime researcher of the Association for Research into Crimes against Art.

“They are too well-known, particularly given the Ministry of Culture has released images of the items. Even a individual buyer or an auction house would want to see paperwork establishing proper ownership before touching such remarkable pieces.”

In the previous years, museums were often reluctant to announce publicly about the loss of well-known works of art and would stay silent out of embarrassment. Now, as art thefts are more reported on, the keeping and selling of taken items is risky business for any criminal.

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

For comparable factors, an investigator said it was highly improbable that the theft had been commissioned. “Commissioned theft is something from Hollywood movies,” 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 are apprehended, you end up in prison. You cannot show it to your friends, you cannot bequeath it to your children.”

Altering taken items by dismantling or reshaping does reduce the value. When it comes to diamonds, it also comes with considerable risk because contemporary methods give gems a larger and lighter appearance, and antique-cut stones would either draw unwanted attention or barter the price down for a coverup.

Importantly, however, melting down or reshaping eliminates the evidence of the crime. “My guess is that the Louvre thieves will try to take the stolen goods to locations with diamond expertise like a country, another nation or even as nearby as a city, and find someone to remove the stones,” suggested Marinello.

The robbery at the Louvre has already raised questions about protective steps at the museum, with a leaked official review expected to be published next month criticising “considerable” and “ongoing” delays in modernizing systems and observing that surveillance were lacking in many rooms. But specialists say showing valuable objects in older structures with a steady stream of guests comes with dangers that are not possible to remove entirely.

“Older structures are more difficult to secure,” said an art crime professor. “Many of them have nice big street-facing windows that allows for criminals to get away, and there may be building protection statutes in place that mean you can’t fit them with proper bulletproof glass.”

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

Contemporary structures are fitted with state-of-the-art external CCTV cameras or in-built vibration sensors that alert about a broken glass in immediately, but old museums may be reluctant to uglify their appearance. Detection devices can be difficult to fit to stuccoed ceilings. Sensors 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 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 before the museum is full of visitors who effectively act as additional security staff.”

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

An author said the conversation in France about the 232-year-old building had mostly focused on visitor management in the past decade, and less on protection.

The museum has an on-site brigade of about 50 full-time emergency personnel, but their mission is mostly to protect the collection from fires and flooding. “There isn't a rapid-response unit,” Sciolino said. “Ultimately, the safety of the Louvre all depends on government support and funding, and currently France simply has no resources.”