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Entering the world’s most-visited museum in the middle of the day, grabbing eight items of invaluable Napoleonic jewellery and disappearing into the city traffic on simple scooters may seem like the boldest of crimes, executed for international notoriety and ensuing Hollywood film treatments.

Specialists who observe patterns in international art crime, however, see the recent heist at the Louvre as a more practical matter: the most recent in a string of smash-and-grab thefts centered more on the material value of valuable gems or metals than the artifacts’ significance, continuing a pattern that has emerged over the last decade in Germany, Britain and the US. The location, they suggest, would have been of lesser importance to the criminals.

“You may ask why criminals who want to take expensive jewellery are breaking into a world-famous museum rather than a Cartier store,” said an expert in art recovery. “It's straightforward: it’s because these days a Cartier store is more secure.”

A spate of aggressive jewellery shop thefts mean that many outlets have strengthened their security in the past few years, with security personnel on their locations and merchandise no longer kept on display overnight. Museums, meanwhile, look more exposed, in part because of the inherent reason of being accessible institutions in older structures, and also the financial situation in many western countries.

“Since Covid, governments across the world have cut back on police and the arts funding,” noted Marinello. “If thieves can get into the Louvre, it shows how vulnerable our museums have become. This is a difficult time to be a museum.”

The theft of the items – featuring necklaces made up of eight sapphires and 631 diamonds, the crown of a historical figure featuring thousands of diamonds and a extremely expensive crown once owned 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 Mona Lisa from the Louvre, performed by the worker Vincenzo Peruggia.

Better points of reference may be the 2019 burglary of valuables from Dresden’s Green Vault Museum worth over millions, the theft of a multi-million pound valuable object 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 collector items from American institutions.

“There’s a simple pattern 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 find it hard to sell them. “It's impossible to trade something as recognizable as the Louvre’s jewels on the legal marketplace”, said an art crime researcher of the Association for Research into Crimes against Art.

“They are too well-known, especially given the cultural authorities has published photos of the pieces. Even a individual buyer or an sales venue would want to see paperwork confirming proper ownership before touching such striking pieces.”

In the past, institutions were often reluctant to announce publicly about the disappearance of well-known works of art and would stay silent out of embarrassment. Now, as art thefts are more widely publicised, the keeping and sale of stolen art is risky business for any lawbreaker.

“Taking a Picasso, it has to remain intact or it becomes valueless, and you have to conceive of a plan to keep it in hiding, perhaps by passing it around dangerous individuals,” said Marinello. “There's ongoing risk to the danger of an accomplice informing authorities to cash in a ransom.”

For comparable factors, an art detective said it was vanishingly unlikely that the robbery had been ordered. “Stolen to order is something from Hollywood movies,” he said. “No one would handle these items. It's global news and in all the newspapers. If you acquire these, if you are apprehended, you end up in prison. You can't display it to your friends, you cannot leave 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 gems a bigger and brighter surface area, and older-style stones would either draw unwanted attention or barter the price down for a concealment.

Importantly, however, melting down or re-cutting removes the evidence of the theft. “My guess is that the robbers will try to bring the stolen goods to locations with diamond expertise like Israel, another nation or even as close as a city, and find someone to remove the gems,” suggested Marinello.

The robbery at the Louvre has already brought up concerns about security measures at the museum, with a unauthorized official review expected to be published soon pointing out “considerable” and “persistent” slow progress in modernizing systems and noting that security cameras were lacking in many rooms. But specialists say displaying valuable objects in older structures with a steady stream of visitors comes with dangers that are impossible to eliminate completely.

“Historic buildings are much harder to secure,” said Erin Thompson. “Many of them have nice big street-facing windows that makes it easy for criminals to escape, 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 conceptualised “like a fortress”, noted Peter Stürmann. “It should include several layers to repel attackers.”

Modern buildings are fitted with state-of-the-art surveillance systems or in-built vibration sensors that alert about a smashed window in real time, but historic institutions may be hesitant to uglify their appearance. Laser scanners can be hard to install to stuccoed ceilings. Sensors may also have to be turned off during the daytime as crowds stomp through a museum.

The schedule of the robbery, which occurred between morning hours in Paris, was common of modern robberies, Stürmann said. “It's logical why thefts tend to happen at either start or end of day. It’s often when security rotate and prior to the museum is crowded who effectively act as additional security staff.”

Technological progress may have thrown up new devices that can notify more rapidly and efficiently, but it has also provided robbers new methods with which to bypass security measures. In Paris, the robbers reached the museum’s first-floor window with a vehicle-mounted ladder and cut through a window with a battery-powered disc cutter.

Elaine Sciolino said the discussion in France about the 232-year-old building had primarily centered on visitor management in recent years, and not as much on protection.

The institution has an in-house brigade of about fifty permanent firefighters, but their mission is mostly to safeguard the collection from blazes and flooding. “There is no rapid-response unit,” Sciolino said. “Ultimately, the safety of the Louvre all depends on political will and funding, and at present the nation simply has no money.”