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Entering the planet's most popular art institution in the middle of the day, taking 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 ensuing movie adaptations.

Specialists who observe patterns in global cultural theft, however, see the recent robbery at the Louvre as a more practical matter: the latest in a string of smash-and-grab thefts centered more on the material value of valuable gems or materials than the artifacts’ significance, continuing a pattern that has appeared over the last ten years in Europe, Britain and the US. The location, they suggest, would have been of secondary concern to the thieves.

“One might wonder why criminals who want to take expensive jewellery are breaking into a world-famous museum rather than a luxury jewelry store,” said Christopher A Marinello. “It's straightforward: it’s because these days a Cartier store is more secure.”

A spate of violent jewellery shop thefts mean that many outlets have beefed up their security in the past few years, with security personnel on their premises and wares no longer shown overnight. Cultural institutions, on the other hand, look vulnerable, partly because of the inherent reason of being public-facing institutions in historic buildings, and partly the financial situation in many western countries.

“Since Covid, governments across the world have cut back on police and the arts funding,” noted Marinello. “With criminals entering the Louvre, it demonstrates how at risk our museums have become. This is a horrible time to be a museum.”

The theft of the objects – including necklaces made up of eight sapphires and hundreds of gems, the crown of a historical figure featuring nearly 2,000 diamonds and a extremely expensive crown once owned by Napoleon III’s wife that the robbers dropped by the roadside on their way out – has inevitably drawn comparisons with the 1911 theft of the famous painting from the same museum, performed by the worker Vincenzo Peruggia.

More relevant comparisons may be the recent burglary of jewellery from a German institution worth over €113m, the theft of a multi-million pound valuable object from Blenheim Palace the same year, the 2017 heist of a valuable item from Berlin’s Bode Museum or even a spate of thefts of sports memorabilia from US mining museums.

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

If the items were to stay whole, experts say, the thieves would find it hard to find a buyer. “There’s no way to sell something as immediately identifiable 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, especially given the cultural authorities has published photos of the pieces. Even a individual buyer or an sales venue would want to see documentation confirming legal possession before handling such striking pieces.”

In the previous years, institutions were often reluctant to go public about the disappearance of famous works of art and would remain quiet out of embarrassment. Now, as art thefts are more reported on, the storage and sale of taken items is risky business for any criminal.

“Taking a Picasso, it has to stay complete 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. “There's ongoing risk to the danger of an partner telling the police to cash in a ransom.”

For similar reasons, an art detective said it was highly improbable that the theft had been ordered. “Commissioned theft is something from Hollywood movies,” he said. “No one would handle these items. It’s all around the world and in all the media. If you acquire these, if you are apprehended, you end up in prison. You cannot show it to your acquaintances, you cannot leave it to your family.”

Modifying taken items by melting down or reshaping does lower the value. When it comes to gems, it also comes with significant danger because contemporary cutting techniques give stones a larger and lighter surface area, and antique-cut stones would either attract notice or reduce value for a concealment.

Importantly, however, melting down or reshaping eliminates the proof of the crime. “My guess is that the robbers will try to bring the items to locations with gem knowledge like a country, India or even as nearby as Antwerp, 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 unauthorized state auditor report expected to be released soon criticising “considerable” and “ongoing” slow progress in modernizing systems and observing that surveillance were missing in multiple areas. But specialists say displaying valuable objects in historic buildings with a steady stream of visitors comes with risks that are impossible to eliminate completely.

“Historic buildings are more difficult to protect,” explained an art crime professor. “Many of them have large accessible windows that makes it easy for thieves to get away, and there may be building protection statutes in place that mean you are unable to install them with secure windows.”

The best protective measures for buildings should be designed “as a stronghold”, said Peter Stürmann. “There should be several layers to deter attackers.”

Modern buildings are equipped with advanced surveillance systems or integrated vibration sensors that raise alarm about a smashed window in real time, but historic institutions may be hesitant to alter their exteriors. Detection devices can be hard to install to stuccoed ceilings. Motion and sound detectors may also have to be turned off during the day as crowds stomp through a museum.

The timing of the Louvre raid, which took place between 9.30am and 9.40am in Paris, was typical of recent thefts, Stürmann said. “It's logical why thefts tend to happen at either start or end of day. Frequently when guards change their shifts and before the museum is full of visitors who actually act as additional security staff.”

Advances in technology may have introduced new gadgets that can raise the alarm more quickly and effectively, but it has also provided thieves new tools with which to circumvent security measures. In Paris, the thieves reached the museum’s first-floor window with a mobile equipment and cut through a glass pane with a battery-powered disc cutter.

Elaine Sciolino said the conversation in France about the 232-year-old building had primarily focused on crowd control in the past decade, and not as much on protection.

The museum has an in-house brigade of about 50 permanent emergency personnel, but their purpose is mostly to safeguard the collection from fires and water damage. “There is no rapid-response unit,” Sciolino said. “In the end, the security of the Louvre all depends on political will and funding, and at present France simply has no money.”