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Breaking into the world’s most-visited museum in the middle of the day, grabbing eight items of invaluable historical gems and vanishing into the city traffic on humble scooters may seem like the boldest of crimes, executed for global fame and subsequent Hollywood film treatments.

Specialists who observe patterns in international art crime, however, see Sunday morning’s robbery at the Louvre as a more practical matter: the most recent in a string of smash-and-grab thefts centered more on the monetary worth of precious stones or materials than the artifacts’ significance, continuing a trend that has emerged over the last decade in Europe, Britain and the US. The location, they propose, would have been of secondary concern to the thieves.

“One might wonder why thieves who want to steal expensive jewellery are breaking into a globally renowned museum rather than a Cartier store,” said an expert in art recovery. “The answer is simple: it’s because nowadays a high-end boutique is better protected.”

A series of violent jewellery shop thefts indicate that many outlets have strengthened their security in the past few years, with security personnel on their premises and merchandise no longer kept on display overnight. Cultural institutions, meanwhile, look more exposed, in part because of the in-built factor of being public-facing institutions in older structures, and also the financial situation in many developed nations.

“After the pandemic, authorities across the world have cut back on law enforcement and the arts funding,” noted Marinello. “If thieves can get into the Louvre, it demonstrates how vulnerable our institutions have become. This is a difficult time to be a museum.”

The robbery of the objects – including necklaces made up of precious stones and 631 diamonds, the tiara of Empress Eugénie featuring nearly 2,000 diamonds and a hugely valuable diadem once owned by Napoleon III’s wife that the robbers dropped by the roadside on their way out – has inevitably been compared with the historical theft of the Mona Lisa from the same museum, performed by the worker Vincenzo Peruggia.

More relevant comparisons may be the 2019 burglary of jewellery from Dresden’s Green Vault Museum worth over millions, the taking of a multi-million pound valuable object from a UK landmark the same year, the 2017 heist of a valuable item from Berlin’s Bode Museum or even a series of robberies of collector items from US mining museums.

“There’s a simple pattern here,” said Marinello. “Smash, grab, and melt it down as rapidly as possible.”

If the artefacts were to stay whole, specialists say, the thieves would find it hard 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 published photos of the items. Even a individual buyer or an auction house would want to see paperwork confirming legal possession before touching such remarkable pieces.”

In the previous years, institutions were often hesitant to go public about the loss of well-known art pieces 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 famous painting, it has to remain intact or it becomes worthless, and you have to devise a scheme to conceal it, maybe by passing it around dangerous individuals,” noted Marinello. “And you’re constantly exposed to the risk of an accomplice informing authorities to cash in a reward.”

For comparable factors, an investigator said it was vanishingly unlikely that the theft had been commissioned. “Commissioned theft is something from Hollywood movies,” he said. “Nobody would touch this. It's global news and in all the newspapers. If you acquire these, if you are apprehended, you go to jail. You cannot show it to your acquaintances, you cannot bequeath it to your children.”

Modifying stolen works by dismantling or reshaping does lower the worth. When it comes to gems, it also comes with significant danger because contemporary cutting techniques give stones a larger and brighter surface area, and older-style stones would either draw unwanted attention or reduce value for a coverup.

Crucially, however, melting down or re-cutting eliminates the evidence of the theft. “I suspect that the robbers will try to take the items to places with gem knowledge like Israel, India or even as nearby as Antwerp, and find someone to cut out the stones,” suggested Marinello.

The heist at the Louvre has already raised questions about security measures at the institution, with a leaked state auditor report expected to be released next month pointing out “considerable” and “ongoing” delays in updating equipment and noting that surveillance were missing in multiple areas. But specialists say displaying precious items in older structures with a steady stream of guests comes with risks that are impossible to remove entirely.

“Historic buildings are much harder to secure,” said an art crime professor. “Many of them have nice big street-facing windows that allows for criminals to get away, and there may be preservation laws in place that mean you are unable to install them with secure windows.”

The most solid security systems for structures should be conceptualised “as a stronghold”, said Peter Stürmann. “There should be several layers to repel attackers.”

Contemporary structures are equipped with advanced external CCTV cameras or in-built seismic detectors that raise alarm about a broken glass in real time, but old museums may be hesitant to uglify their exteriors. Laser scanners can be difficult to install to decorated surfaces. Motion and sound detectors may also have to be turned off during the daytime as hordes of visitors stomp through a museum.

The timing of the robbery, which occurred between 9.30am and 9.40am local time, was common of modern robberies, Stürmann said. “It's logical why robberies tend to happen at either start or end of day. It’s often when security 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 devices that can notify more quickly and effectively, but it has also given robbers new tools with which to circumvent protections. In Paris, the robbers accessed the museum’s upper level with a vehicle-mounted ladder and breached a window with a battery-powered disc cutter.

Elaine Sciolino 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 security.

The museum has an on-site brigade of about 50 permanent firefighters, but their mission is mostly to protect the collection from fires and water damage. “There isn't a rapid-response unit,” Sciolino said. “In the end, the security of the Louvre all comes down to political will and money, and currently the nation lacks sufficient money.”