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Entering the world’s most-visited museum in broad daylight, taking 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 movie adaptations.

Specialists who observe trends in international art crime, however, see Sunday morning’s robbery at the Louvre as something more prosaic: the latest in a string of smash-and-grab thefts focused more on the monetary worth of precious stones or metals than the historical importance, continuing a trend that has appeared over the last ten years in Germany, Britain and the US. The location, they propose, would have been of lesser importance to the criminals.

“One might wonder why criminals who want to take valuable jewellery are entering a globally renowned museum rather than a luxury jewelry store,” stated an expert in art recovery. “It's straightforward: it’s because nowadays a high-end boutique is better protected.”

A series of violent retail store thefts indicate that many outlets have beefed up their protection in recent years, with security personnel on their premises and wares no longer shown overnight. Cultural institutions, on the other hand, look more exposed, partly because of the in-built reason of being accessible institutions in historic buildings, and also the financial situation in many developed nations.

“After the pandemic, governments across the world have cut back on law enforcement and the culture sector,” said Marinello. “With criminals entering the Louvre, it demonstrates how vulnerable our museums have become. This is a horrible time to be a museum.”

The robbery of the objects – featuring necklaces made up of eight sapphires and 631 diamonds, the tiara of Empress Eugénie featuring nearly 2,000 diamonds and a extremely expensive crown once owned by a royal 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, carried out by the Italian handyman the thief.

More relevant points of reference may be the recent theft of valuables from Dresden’s Green Vault Museum worth over €113m, the taking of a multi-million pound valuable object from Blenheim Palace the same year, the recent robbery of a large gold coin from Berlin’s Bode Museum or even a spate of robberies of sports memorabilia from US mining museums.

“It's a clear trend here,” explained Marinello. “Smash, grab, and melt it down as rapidly as possible.”

If the artefacts were to stay whole, experts say, the thieves would struggle to find a buyer. “It's impossible to trade something as immediately identifiable as the museum's gems on the licit market”, said an art crime researcher of the Association for Research into Crimes against Art.

“They would be immediately recognised, particularly given the Ministry of Culture has released images of the pieces. Even a individual buyer or an sales venue would want to see paperwork establishing proper ownership before touching such striking pieces.”

In the previous years, museums were often hesitant to go public about the disappearance of well-known art pieces and would stay silent out of shame. Now, as art thefts are more reported on, the storage and selling of taken items is risky business for any lawbreaker.

“Taking a famous painting, it has to stay complete or it becomes worthless, and you have to conceive of a scheme to keep it in hiding, maybe by moving it among dangerous individuals,” said Marinello. “There's ongoing risk to the danger of an partner informing authorities to cash in a ransom.”

For similar reasons, an investigator said it was vanishingly unlikely that the robbery had been commissioned. “Commissioned theft is something from films,” he said. “Nobody would touch this. 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 acquaintances, you cannot leave it to your children.”

Altering taken items by melting down or re-cutting does lower the value. When it comes to diamonds, it also comes with considerable risk because modern cutting techniques give gems a larger and brighter surface area, and antique-cut stones would either draw unwanted attention or reduce value for a coverup.

Crucially, however, dismantling or re-cutting removes the evidence of the theft. “My guess is that the robbers will try to bring the items to locations with gem knowledge like a country, India or even as nearby as a city, and find someone to cut out the gems,” suggested Marinello.

The heist at the Louvre has already brought up concerns about protective steps at the museum, with a unauthorized state auditor report expected to be published next month criticising “significant” 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 constant flow of guests comes with dangers that are impossible to eliminate completely.

“Older structures are much harder to protect,” said an art crime professor. “They often 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 proper bulletproof glass.”

The most solid protective measures for buildings should be conceptualised “like a fortress”, said a security advisor. “There should be several layers to deter intruders.”

Modern buildings are equipped with advanced surveillance systems or in-built seismic detectors that alert about a broken glass in real time, but old museums may be reluctant to uglify their appearance. Detection devices can be difficult to install to decorated surfaces. Motion and sound detectors may also have to be disabled during the day as crowds walk through a museum.

The timing of the robbery, which took place between morning hours local time, was typical of modern robberies, Stürmann said. “It's logical 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 effectively act as extra protection.”

Advances in technology may have thrown up new gadgets that can notify more quickly and effectively, but it has also provided robbers new methods with which to bypass security measures. In Paris, the thieves reached the museum’s upper level with a mobile equipment and cut through a window with a battery-powered disc cutter.

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

The museum has an on-site team of about 50 permanent emergency personnel, but their purpose is mostly to safeguard the artworks from blazes and water damage. “There is no rapid-response unit,” Sciolino said. “Ultimately, the security of the Louvre all depends on government support and funding, and currently France lacks sufficient money.”