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Entering the planet's most popular art institution 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 most audacious of crimes, executed for global fame and ensuing movie adaptations.

Specialists who study patterns in international art crime, however, see the recent heist 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 valuable gems or metals than the artifacts’ significance, perpetuating a pattern that has emerged over the last ten years in Europe, Britain and the US. The venue, they propose, would have been of secondary concern to the thieves.

“You may ask why thieves who want to take valuable jewellery are breaking into a world-famous museum rather than a luxury jewelry store,” said Christopher A Marinello. “The answer is simple: it’s because nowadays a Cartier store is more secure.”

A spate of aggressive jewellery shop thefts mean that many outlets have beefed up their security in the past few years, with armed guards on their premises and wares no longer kept on display overnight. Museums, meanwhile, look more exposed, in part because of the inherent factor of being accessible institutions in older structures, and also the financial situation in many developed nations.

“Since Covid, governments across the world have cut back on law enforcement 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 theft of the items – including jewelry pieces made up of precious stones and 631 diamonds, the tiara of a historical figure featuring thousands of diamonds and a hugely valuable diadem once possessed by a royal that the robbers left by the street on their way out – has inevitably drawn comparisons with the 1911 theft of the Mona Lisa from the Louvre, performed by the worker the thief.

Better comparisons may be the recent burglary of valuables from a German institution worth over millions, the taking of a multi-million pound valuable object from a UK landmark the same year, the recent robbery of a large gold coin from a European museum or even a series of thefts of sports memorabilia from US mining museums.

“It's a clear trend here,” explained Marinello. “Break in, take items, and dismantle them as rapidly as possible.”

If the items were to remain intact, experts say, the criminals would struggle to sell them. “There’s no way to trade something as recognizable as the museum's gems on the licit market”, commented an art crime researcher of the Association for Research into Crimes against Art.

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

In the previous years, museums were often hesitant to announce publicly about the loss of well-known works of art and would remain quiet out of embarrassment. Now, as cultural robberies are more reported on, the storage and selling of taken items is dangerous for any criminal.

“If you steal a famous painting, it has to remain intact or it becomes valueless, and you have to conceive of a scheme to keep it in hiding, perhaps by passing it around difficult criminal actors,” said Marinello. “And you’re constantly exposed to the danger of an partner telling the police to cash in a ransom.”

For comparable factors, an art detective said it was highly improbable that the theft had been commissioned. “Stolen to order is something from Hollywood movies,” he said. “Nobody would touch this. It's global news and in all the media. If you buy this, if you are apprehended, you end up in prison. You can't display it to your friends, you cannot leave it to your children.”

Modifying taken items by melting down or re-cutting does lower the worth. When it comes to diamonds, it also comes with significant danger because contemporary cutting techniques give gems a larger and lighter appearance, and antique-cut stones would either draw unwanted attention or reduce value for a coverup.

Importantly, however, melting down or re-cutting eliminates the evidence of the crime. “I suspect that the Louvre thieves will try to bring the stolen goods to locations with gem knowledge like Israel, India or even as close as a city, and locate an expert to cut out the stones,” said Marinello.

The heist at the Louvre has already raised questions about security measures at the institution, with a leaked official review expected to be published next month pointing out “considerable” and “persistent” delays in updating equipment and observing that surveillance were lacking in multiple areas. But security experts say displaying valuable objects in older structures with a constant flow of guests comes with dangers that are impossible to eliminate completely.

“Historic buildings are more difficult to protect,” said Erin Thompson. “They often have nice big street-facing windows that makes it easy for thieves to escape, and there may be preservation laws in place that mean you can’t fit them with proper bulletproof glass.”

The most solid security systems for buildings should be conceptualised “as a stronghold”, said a security advisor. “It should include multiple levels to deter intruders.”

Modern buildings are equipped with advanced surveillance systems or in-built seismic detectors that alert about a smashed window in real time, but historic institutions may be reluctant to uglify their exteriors. Detection devices can be difficult to install to decorated surfaces. Motion and sound detectors may also have to be turned off during the daytime as crowds stomp through a museum.

The schedule of the Louvre raid, which occurred between morning hours local time, was typical of recent thefts, Stürmann said. “There’s a good reason why thefts tend to happen at either start or end of day. It’s often when security rotate and before the museum is crowded who actually act as additional security staff.”

Advances in technology may have introduced new gadgets that can notify more rapidly and effectively, but it has also provided robbers new tools with which to bypass protections. In Paris, the robbers accessed the museum’s first-floor window with a mobile equipment and breached a glass pane with a battery-powered disc cutter.

Elaine Sciolino said the conversation in the country about the 232-year-old building had mostly centered on crowd control in the past decade, and less on security.

The museum has an in-house brigade of about 50 permanent firefighters, but their purpose is mainly to safeguard the artworks from fires and water damage. “There is no rapid-response unit,” 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.”