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Breaking into the planet's most popular museum in the middle of the day, taking eight items of invaluable historical gems and vanishing into the city traffic on humble scooters may seem like the boldest of crimes, carried out for global fame and ensuing movie adaptations.

Experts who study patterns in international art crime, however, see the recent heist at the Louvre as a more practical matter: the most recent in a series of smash-and-grab thefts focused more on the monetary worth of valuable gems or materials than the artifacts’ significance, perpetuating a pattern that has appeared over the last decade in Europe, Britain and the US. The location, they suggest, would have been of secondary concern to the criminals.

“You may ask why criminals who want to steal expensive jewellery are breaking into a globally renowned museum rather than a luxury jewelry store,” said Christopher A Marinello. “It's straightforward: it’s because nowadays a high-end boutique is better protected.”

A series of violent jewellery shop thefts mean that many stores have beefed up their security in the past few years, with armed guards on their premises and wares no longer kept on display overnight. Cultural institutions, meanwhile, look vulnerable, partly because of the inherent factor of being accessible institutions in historic buildings, and partly the current economic climate in many western countries.

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

The robbery of the items – including jewelry pieces made up of eight sapphires and hundreds of gems, the crown of a historical figure featuring thousands of diamonds and a extremely expensive diadem once possessed by Napoleon III’s wife that the robbers dropped by the street on their way out – has naturally been compared with the historical theft of the famous painting from the Louvre, carried out by the worker Vincenzo Peruggia.

Better points of reference may be the 2019 burglary of jewellery from Dresden’s Green Vault Museum worth over €113m, the theft of a multi-million pound valuable object from a UK landmark the that year, the recent heist of a valuable item from a European museum or even a spate of robberies of sports memorabilia from US mining museums.

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

If the items were to remain intact, specialists say, the thieves would struggle to sell them. “It's impossible to sell something as recognizable as the museum's gems on the legal marketplace”, commented Lynda Albertson of the Association for Research into Crimes against Art.

“They would be immediately recognised, especially given the cultural authorities has published photos of the items. Even a private collector or an sales venue would want to see paperwork confirming legal possession before handling such striking pieces.”

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

“If you steal a famous painting, it has to remain intact or it becomes worthless, and you have to conceive of a scheme to keep it in hiding, maybe by moving it among difficult criminal actors,” noted Marinello. “There's ongoing risk to the danger of an partner informing authorities to collect a reward.”

For comparable factors, an investigator said it was vanishingly unlikely that the theft had been commissioned. “Commissioned theft is something from Hollywood movies,” he said. “No one would handle these items. It's global news and in all the media. If you acquire these, if you are apprehended, you go to jail. You can't display it to your friends, you cannot leave it to your children.”

Modifying stolen works by dismantling or reshaping does lower the worth. When it comes to gems, it also comes with considerable risk because modern methods give stones a larger and brighter appearance, and older-style stones would either attract notice or reduce value for a concealment.

Crucially, however, melting down or reshaping removes 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, another nation or even as nearby as Antwerp, and find someone to cut out the stones,” said Marinello.

The robbery at the Louvre has already raised questions about security measures at the institution, with a unauthorized official review expected to be released next month criticising “significant” and “ongoing” delays in modernizing equipment and noting that security cameras were missing in multiple areas. But security experts say showing precious items in older structures with a steady stream of visitors comes with risks that are not possible to remove entirely.

“Historic buildings are more difficult to protect,” said an art crime professor. “Many of them have large accessible windows that allows for thieves to escape, and there may be preservation laws in place that mean you can’t fit them with secure windows.”

The most solid protective measures for structures should be designed “like a fortress”, noted a security advisor. “It should include multiple levels to deter attackers.”

Modern buildings are fitted with advanced external CCTV cameras or integrated seismic detectors that alert about a broken glass in real time, but old museums may be reluctant to alter their exteriors. Laser scanners can be difficult to install to decorated surfaces. Sensors may also have to be disabled during the day as hordes of visitors walk through a museum.

The schedule of the Louvre raid, which occurred between 9.30am and 9.40am 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 crowded who actually 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 robbers new methods with which to bypass protections. In Paris, the robbers accessed the museum’s upper level with a mobile equipment and cut through a window with a electric tool.

An author said the discussion in France about the 232-year-old structure had mostly focused on crowd control in recent years, and less on security.

The museum has an in-house team of about 50 full-time firefighters, but their purpose is mostly to protect the artworks from blazes and water damage. “There isn't a quick reaction team,” Sciolino said. “In the end, the safety of the Louvre all depends on political will and money, and currently the nation simply has no money.”