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Breaking into the world’s most-visited museum in broad daylight, grabbing eight pieces of priceless historical gems and disappearing into Paris traffic on humble scooters may seem like the boldest of crimes, carried out for international notoriety and ensuing movie adaptations.

Specialists who observe patterns in global cultural theft, however, see the recent robbery at the Louvre as a more practical matter: the most recent in a series of smash-and-grab thefts centered more on the material value of precious stones or materials than the artifacts’ significance, continuing a pattern that has appeared over the last decade in Germany, the UK 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 valuable jewellery are entering a globally renowned 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 indicate that many outlets have beefed up their security in recent years, with security personnel on their premises and wares no longer kept on display overnight. Museums, on the other hand, look more exposed, partly because of the in-built reason of being public-facing institutions in historic buildings, and also the current economic climate in many developed nations.

“After the pandemic, authorities across the globe have reduced spending on law enforcement and the arts funding,” said Marinello. “If thieves can get into the Louvre, it shows how vulnerable our museums have become. This is a horrible time to be a museum.”

The theft of the objects – including jewelry pieces made up of eight sapphires and 631 diamonds, the crown of Empress Eugénie featuring thousands of diamonds and a extremely expensive crown once owned by Napoleon III’s wife that the robbers dropped by the roadside on their way out – has inevitably been compared with the 1911 theft of the Mona Lisa from the same museum, carried out by the Italian handyman the thief.

Better comparisons may be the 2019 theft of valuables from a German institution worth over €113m, the taking of a multi-million pound gold toilet from a UK landmark the same year, the recent robbery of a large gold coin from a European museum or even a spate of thefts of sports memorabilia from American institutions.

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

If the items were to stay whole, experts say, the thieves would find it hard to find a buyer. “It's impossible to trade something as recognizable as the museum's gems on the licit market”, 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 private collector or an auction house would want to see documentation establishing legal possession before touching such striking pieces.”

In the previous years, institutions were often reluctant to announce publicly about the disappearance of well-known works of art and would remain quiet out of shame. These days, as cultural robberies are more reported on, the storage and selling of stolen art is risky business for any lawbreaker.

“If you steal a famous painting, it has to stay complete or it becomes worthless, and you have to devise a scheme to keep it in hiding, perhaps by moving it among difficult criminal actors,” said Marinello. “There's ongoing risk to the risk of an accomplice telling the police to cash in a reward.”

For comparable factors, an investigator said it was highly improbable that the robbery had been commissioned. “Commissioned theft is something from films,” he said. “Nobody would touch this. 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 leave it to your children.”

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

Importantly, however, dismantling or reshaping eliminates the proof of the theft. “I suspect that the Louvre thieves will try to take the items to locations with diamond expertise like a country, India or even as nearby as Antwerp, and locate an expert to cut out the gems,” suggested Marinello.

The heist at the Louvre has already brought up concerns about security measures at the institution, with a leaked state auditor report expected to be published next month criticising “considerable” and “ongoing” slow progress in modernizing systems and observing that security cameras were lacking in many rooms. But specialists say displaying precious items in historic buildings with a constant flow of visitors comes with dangers that are not possible to remove entirely.

“Historic buildings are more difficult to protect,” said an art crime professor. “They often have nice big street-facing windows that makes it easy for criminals to escape, and there may be preservation laws in place that mean you are unable to install them with proper bulletproof glass.”

The most solid protective measures for structures should be designed “like a fortress”, noted Peter Stürmann. “It should include multiple levels to deter 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 alter their appearance. Laser scanners can be hard to fit to stuccoed ceilings. Motion and sound detectors may also have to be disabled during the daytime as hordes of visitors walk through a museum.

The schedule of the robbery, which occurred between morning hours local time, was typical of modern robberies, Stürmann said. “It's logical why thefts tend to happen at either opening or closing times. Frequently when security rotate and before the museum is full of visitors who actually act as additional security staff.”

Advances in technology may have introduced new devices that can raise the alarm more rapidly and effectively, but it has also given robbers new methods with which to bypass protections. In the city, the thieves reached the museum’s upper level with a vehicle-mounted ladder and breached a glass pane with a battery-powered disc cutter.

An author said the discussion in the country about the 232-year-old building had mostly centered on visitor management in the past decade, and not as much on security.

The museum has an on-site brigade of about 50 full-time firefighters, but their mission is mostly to safeguard the artworks from blazes and flooding. “There is no quick reaction team,” Sciolino said. “Ultimately, the security of the Louvre all depends on government support and funding, and currently the nation simply has no money.”