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Entering the planet's most popular art institution in broad daylight, taking eight pieces of priceless historical gems and disappearing into the city traffic on humble scooters may seem like the boldest of crimes, carried out for global fame and ensuing Hollywood film treatments.

Specialists who observe patterns in international art crime, however, see the recent robbery at the Louvre as something more prosaic: the most recent in a series of smash-and-grab thefts centered more on the monetary worth of valuable gems or metals than the historical importance, perpetuating a trend that has emerged over the last ten years in Germany, the UK and the US. The location, they propose, would have been of secondary concern to the criminals.

“One might wonder why criminals who want to take expensive jewellery are breaking into a globally renowned museum rather than a Cartier store,” stated Christopher A Marinello. “It's straightforward: it’s because these days a Cartier store is better protected.”

A spate of violent retail store thefts mean that many outlets have strengthened their security in the past few years, with armed guards on their locations and merchandise no longer shown overnight. Cultural institutions, on the other hand, look vulnerable, partly because of the inherent factor of being accessible institutions in older structures, and also the financial situation in many western countries.

“Since Covid, governments across the world have reduced spending on law enforcement and the culture sector,” said Marinello. “With criminals entering the Louvre, it shows how at risk our institutions 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 hundreds of gems, the tiara of Empress Eugénie featuring nearly 2,000 diamonds and a extremely expensive crown once possessed by a royal that the robbers left by the roadside on their way out – has naturally drawn comparisons with the historical theft of the Mona Lisa from the same museum, performed by the worker Vincenzo Peruggia.

Better points of reference 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 Berlin’s Bode Museum or even a series of robberies of sports memorabilia from US mining museums.

“There’s a simple pattern here,” explained Marinello. “Break in, take items, and dismantle them as quickly as possible.”

If the artefacts were to remain intact, experts say, the thieves would find it hard to find a buyer. “There’s no way to trade something as immediately identifiable as the museum's gems on the licit market”, said an art crime researcher of the a relevant organization.

“They are too well-known, particularly given the Ministry of Culture has published photos of the items. Even a private collector or an auction house would want to see paperwork confirming legal possession before handling such remarkable pieces.”

In the previous years, museums were often hesitant to announce publicly about the disappearance of well-known works of art and would stay silent out of shame. Now, as art thefts are more widely publicised, the keeping and sale of stolen art is risky business for any criminal.

“If you steal a Picasso, it has to stay complete or it becomes valueless, and you have to conceive of a plan to keep it in hiding, maybe by moving it among difficult criminal actors,” noted Marinello. “And you’re constantly exposed to the risk of an partner informing authorities to cash in a ransom.”

For similar reasons, an investigator said it was highly improbable that the robbery had been commissioned. “Stolen to order is something from Hollywood movies,” he said. “No one would handle these items. It's global news and in all the newspapers. If you buy this, if you get caught, you go to jail. You can't display it to your acquaintances, you cannot bequeath it to your children.”

Altering stolen works by dismantling or re-cutting does lower the worth. When it comes to diamonds, it also comes with significant danger because contemporary methods give gems a bigger and lighter appearance, and antique-cut stones would either draw unwanted attention or reduce value for a concealment.

Importantly, however, dismantling or reshaping eliminates the evidence of the crime. “My guess is that the Louvre thieves will try to take the items to locations with gem knowledge like a country, another nation or even as nearby as a city, and find someone to cut out the stones,” suggested Marinello.

The robbery at the Louvre has already raised questions about security measures at the museum, with a unauthorized state auditor report expected to be published soon criticising “considerable” and “persistent” delays in updating equipment and noting that security cameras were missing in multiple areas. But security experts say displaying valuable objects in older structures with a constant flow of visitors comes with risks that are impossible to eliminate completely.

“Historic buildings are more difficult to secure,” explained 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 can’t fit them with proper bulletproof glass.”

The best security systems for structures should be conceptualised “like a fortress”, said a security advisor. “There should be several layers to repel attackers.”

Contemporary structures are fitted with advanced external CCTV cameras or in-built seismic detectors that alert about a broken glass in real time, but historic institutions may be reluctant to alter their exteriors. Detection devices 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 Louvre raid, which took place between 9.30am and 9.40am in Paris, was common of recent thefts, Stürmann said. “There’s a good reason why thefts tend to happen at either start or end of day. Frequently when guards rotate and prior to the museum is crowded who effectively act as extra protection.”

Technological progress may have thrown up new devices that can notify more quickly and efficiently, but it has also given robbers new methods with which to bypass protections. In the city, the robbers reached the museum’s upper level with a vehicle-mounted ladder and cut through a glass pane with a battery-powered disc cutter.

An author said the conversation in France about the 232-year-old structure had mostly centered on visitor management in recent years, and not as much on security.

The museum has an on-site team of about 50 permanent emergency personnel, but their mission is mostly to protect the collection 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 funding, and currently the nation simply has no money.”