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Breaking into the world’s most-visited museum in broad daylight, grabbing eight items of invaluable historical gems and vanishing into the city traffic on humble scooters may seem like the most audacious of crimes, carried out for global fame and ensuing Hollywood film treatments.

Specialists who study trends in international art crime, however, see the recent robbery at the Louvre as a more practical matter: the latest in a series of smash-and-grab thefts focused more on the material value of precious stones or metals than the historical importance, perpetuating a pattern that has emerged over the last decade in Germany, the UK and the US. The venue, they propose, would have been of lesser importance to the thieves.

“One might wonder why thieves who want to take expensive jewellery are entering a globally renowned museum rather than a Cartier store,” said Christopher A Marinello. “The answer is simple: it’s because nowadays a high-end boutique is better protected.”

A spate of violent jewellery shop thefts mean that many outlets have beefed up their protection in recent years, with security personnel on their premises and wares no longer kept on display overnight. Cultural institutions, on the other hand, look vulnerable, in part because of the inherent factor of being public-facing institutions in older structures, and partly the financial situation in many developed nations.

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

The robbery of the objects – including necklaces made up of precious stones and 631 diamonds, the tiara of a historical figure containing nearly 2,000 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 inevitably been compared with the historical theft of the Mona Lisa from the Louvre, performed by the worker Vincenzo Peruggia.

More relevant comparisons may be the recent theft of jewellery from Dresden’s Green Vault Museum worth over millions, the taking of a multi-million pound 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,” explained Marinello. “Break in, take items, and dismantle them as quickly as possible.”

If the artefacts were to stay whole, specialists say, the criminals would struggle to sell them. “It's impossible to sell 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 Ministry of Culture has published photos of the items. Even a private collector or an auction house would want to see documentation confirming proper ownership before handling such striking pieces.”

In the previous years, museums were often reluctant to announce publicly about the loss of famous art pieces and would stay silent out of shame. Now, as cultural robberies are more reported on, the storage and selling of taken items is dangerous for any lawbreaker.

“If you steal a Picasso, it has to stay complete or it becomes worthless, and you have to conceive of a scheme to conceal it, maybe by passing it around dangerous individuals,” noted Marinello. “And you’re constantly exposed to the risk of an partner telling the police to cash in a reward.”

For comparable factors, an art detective said it was vanishingly unlikely that the robbery had been ordered. “Commissioned theft is something from Hollywood movies,” he said. “Nobody would touch this. It's global news and in all the newspapers. If you acquire these, if you are apprehended, you go to jail. You cannot show it to your friends, you cannot leave it to your children.”

Modifying stolen works by melting down or re-cutting does reduce the value. When it comes to diamonds, it also comes with considerable risk because modern cutting techniques give gems a bigger and lighter surface area, and older-style stones would either draw unwanted attention or barter the price down for a coverup.

Importantly, however, melting down or reshaping removes the evidence of the theft. “I suspect that the Louvre thieves will try to bring the items to places with diamond expertise like Israel, another nation or even as close as Antwerp, and locate an expert to remove the gems,” said Marinello.

The robbery at the Louvre has already brought up concerns about protective steps at the institution, with a unauthorized official review expected to be released soon criticising “significant” and “persistent” delays in updating equipment and noting that surveillance were missing in many rooms. But security experts say displaying precious items in older structures with a constant flow of guests comes with dangers that are not possible to remove entirely.

“Older structures are much harder 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 protective measures for structures should be designed “as a stronghold”, said Peter Stürmann. “There should be several layers to repel intruders.”

Contemporary structures are fitted with state-of-the-art external CCTV cameras or integrated vibration sensors that alert about a smashed window in immediately, but old museums may be hesitant to alter their exteriors. Laser scanners can be difficult to install to decorated surfaces. Sensors may also have to be turned off during the day as hordes of visitors stomp through a museum.

The timing of the Louvre raid, which took place between morning hours local time, was typical of modern robberies, Stürmann said. “There’s a good reason why robberies tend to happen at either start or end of day. It’s often when guards change their shifts and prior to the museum is full of visitors who effectively act as extra protection.”

Technological progress may have thrown up new devices that can raise the alarm more rapidly and effectively, but it has also given thieves new methods with which to bypass protections. In Paris, the robbers reached the museum’s first-floor window with a vehicle-mounted ladder and breached a window with a electric tool.

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

The institution has an on-site brigade of about fifty full-time emergency personnel, but their purpose is mostly to safeguard the collection from fires and flooding. “There is no quick reaction team,” Sciolino said. “Ultimately, the safety of the Louvre all comes down to political will and money, and at present France simply has no resources.”