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Breaking into the planet's most popular museum in broad daylight, grabbing eight pieces of priceless Napoleonic jewellery and vanishing into the city traffic on humble scooters may seem like the boldest of crimes, executed for global fame and subsequent movie adaptations.

Experts who study patterns in global cultural theft, 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 monetary worth of valuable gems or metals than the artifacts’ significance, continuing a pattern that has emerged over the last decade in Germany, the UK and the US. The venue, 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 world-famous museum rather than a luxury jewelry store,” said Christopher A Marinello. “It's straightforward: it’s because nowadays a Cartier store is more secure.”

A spate of violent retail store thefts indicate that many stores have beefed up their protection in recent years, with armed guards on their premises and merchandise no longer kept on display overnight. Cultural institutions, meanwhile, look more exposed, partly 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, authorities across the world have cut back on police and the arts funding,” noted 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 objects – including necklaces made up of precious stones and 631 diamonds, the crown of a historical figure containing thousands of diamonds and a extremely expensive crown once possessed by Napoleon III’s wife that the thieves dropped by the street on their way out – has inevitably been compared with the 1911 theft of the Mona Lisa from the same museum, carried out by the worker the thief.

Better points of reference may be the 2019 burglary of jewellery from Dresden’s Green Vault Museum worth over millions, the theft of a £4.75m gold toilet from Blenheim Palace the same year, the recent heist of a valuable item from a European museum or even a spate 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 quickly as possible.”

If the artefacts were to remain intact, specialists say, the thieves would find it hard to sell them. “There’s no way to trade something as immediately identifiable as the Louvre’s jewels on the legal marketplace”, said an art crime researcher of the a relevant organization.

“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 legal possession before handling such remarkable pieces.”

In the previous years, institutions were often reluctant to go public about the disappearance of famous works of art and would stay silent out of shame. Now, as art thefts are more widely publicised, the keeping and selling of stolen art is dangerous for any lawbreaker.

“If you steal a famous painting, it has to remain intact or it becomes valueless, and you have to conceive of a scheme to conceal it, perhaps by moving it among difficult criminal actors,” noted Marinello. “There's ongoing risk to the danger of an accomplice telling the police to cash in a reward.”

For similar reasons, an art detective said it was highly improbable that the robbery had been ordered. “Commissioned theft is something from films,” he said. “No one would handle these items. It's global news and in all the media. If you buy this, if you are apprehended, you end up in prison. You cannot show it to your acquaintances, you cannot bequeath it to your family.”

Altering stolen works by dismantling or reshaping does lower the value. When it comes to gems, it also comes with considerable risk because contemporary cutting techniques give stones a bigger and brighter surface area, and antique-cut stones would either attract notice or barter the price down for a coverup.

Importantly, however, melting down or re-cutting removes the proof of the crime. “My guess is that the robbers will try to bring the items to locations with diamond expertise like a country, India or even as nearby as a city, and locate an expert to remove the gems,” suggested Marinello.

The heist at the Louvre has already raised questions about security measures at the museum, with a leaked official review expected to be published soon criticising “significant” and “ongoing” slow progress in modernizing equipment and noting that security cameras were lacking in multiple areas. But specialists say showing valuable objects in historic buildings with a steady stream of guests comes with dangers that are not possible to eliminate completely.

“Older structures are more difficult to secure,” said Erin Thompson. “They often have large accessible windows that makes it easy for criminals to get away, and there may be building protection statutes in place that mean you can’t fit them with secure windows.”

The most solid protective measures for buildings should be designed “as a stronghold”, said a security advisor. “It should include several layers to deter intruders.”

Modern buildings are equipped with state-of-the-art external CCTV cameras or integrated vibration sensors that raise alarm about a broken glass in immediately, but historic institutions may be hesitant to uglify their appearance. Detection devices can be hard to fit to stuccoed ceilings. 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 occurred between morning hours 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 guards change their shifts and prior to the museum is full of visitors who effectively act as additional security staff.”

Advances in technology may have thrown up new gadgets that can notify more quickly and efficiently, but it has also provided robbers new methods with which to bypass security measures. In Paris, the robbers 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 conversation in the country about the historic building had primarily centered on crowd control in the past decade, and not as much on protection.

The institution has an on-site brigade of about fifty permanent emergency personnel, but their mission is mainly to safeguard the collection from blazes and water damage. “There isn't a rapid-response unit,” Sciolino said. “In the end, the security of the Louvre all comes down to government support and funding, and currently the nation simply has no resources.”