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Entering the planet's most popular museum in broad daylight, taking eight pieces of priceless Napoleonic jewellery and vanishing into the city traffic on humble scooters may seem like the boldest of crimes, carried out for international notoriety and subsequent movie adaptations.

Experts who study patterns in global cultural theft, however, see Sunday morning’s robbery at the Louvre as a more practical matter: the latest in a series of smash-and-grab thefts centered more on the material value of precious stones or materials than the artifacts’ significance, continuing a pattern that has appeared over the last ten years in Germany, Britain and the US. The location, they suggest, would have been of lesser importance to the criminals.

“One might wonder why thieves who want to steal valuable jewellery are breaking into a globally renowned museum rather than a Cartier store,” said Christopher A Marinello. “The answer is simple: it’s because nowadays a Cartier store is better protected.”

A spate of violent jewellery shop thefts indicate that many outlets have beefed up their security in the past few years, with armed guards on their locations and merchandise no longer shown overnight. Museums, on the other hand, look vulnerable, in part because of the in-built factor of being accessible institutions in historic buildings, and partly the current economic climate in many western countries.

“Since Covid, authorities across the globe have reduced spending on police and the culture sector,” said Marinello. “If thieves can get into the Louvre, it shows how vulnerable our museums have become. This is a difficult time to be a museum.”

The theft of the items – featuring jewelry pieces made up of precious stones and 631 diamonds, the tiara of Empress Eugénie featuring thousands of diamonds and a extremely expensive crown once owned by a royal that the robbers dropped by the roadside on their way out – has naturally drawn comparisons with the 1911 theft of the Mona Lisa from the Louvre, carried out by the Italian handyman the thief.

More relevant comparisons may be the 2019 burglary of valuables from Dresden’s Green Vault Museum worth over millions, the taking of a £4.75m gold toilet from Blenheim Palace the same year, the recent robbery of a valuable item from a European museum or even a series of thefts of collector items from American institutions.

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

If the items were to remain intact, experts say, the thieves would find it hard to find a buyer. “It's impossible to trade something as recognizable as the museum's gems on the legal marketplace”, commented an art crime researcher of the Association for Research into Crimes against Art.

“They would be immediately recognised, particularly given the Ministry of Culture has published photos of the items. Even a individual buyer or an auction house would want to see paperwork establishing legal possession before handling such remarkable pieces.”

In the previous years, institutions were often reluctant to announce publicly about the loss of famous art pieces and would remain quiet out of embarrassment. These days, as art thefts are more widely publicised, the keeping and selling of taken items is risky business for any lawbreaker.

“Taking a famous painting, it has to stay complete or it becomes valueless, and you have to conceive of a plan to conceal it, perhaps by passing it around dangerous individuals,” said Marinello. “And you’re constantly exposed to the danger of an accomplice 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 acquire these, if you are apprehended, you go to jail. You can't display it to your acquaintances, you cannot leave it to your children.”

Modifying stolen works by dismantling or re-cutting does reduce the value. When it comes to gems, it also comes with significant danger because modern cutting techniques give stones a bigger and lighter surface area, and antique-cut stones would either attract notice or barter the price down for a coverup.

Crucially, however, dismantling or re-cutting removes the proof of the theft. “My guess is that the robbers will try to take the items to locations with diamond expertise like Israel, another nation or even as nearby as Antwerp, and find someone to remove the gems,” suggested Marinello.

The robbery at the Louvre has already raised questions about protective steps at the museum, with a leaked state auditor report expected to be released soon criticising “considerable” and “persistent” slow progress in modernizing equipment and observing that surveillance were lacking in many rooms. But security experts say showing valuable objects in historic buildings with a constant flow of visitors comes with dangers that are not possible to remove entirely.

“Older structures are more difficult to protect,” said an art crime professor. “They often have large accessible windows that allows for thieves to get away, and there may be preservation laws in place that mean you are unable to install them with proper bulletproof glass.”

The best protective measures for structures should be conceptualised “like a fortress”, noted Peter Stürmann. “There should be multiple levels to deter attackers.”

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 reluctant to uglify their exteriors. Detection devices can be difficult to install to decorated surfaces. Sensors may also have to be disabled during the daytime as hordes of visitors stomp through a museum.

The schedule of the Louvre raid, which occurred between 9.30am and 9.40am in Paris, was common of modern robberies, 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 additional security staff.”

Technological progress may have thrown up new devices that can notify more rapidly and effectively, but it has also given robbers new tools with which to bypass protections. In the city, the robbers reached the museum’s first-floor window with a mobile equipment and cut through a window with a battery-powered disc cutter.

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

The museum has an in-house team of about 50 full-time firefighters, but their mission is mostly to safeguard 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 money, and currently France lacks sufficient money.”