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Entering the planet's most popular art institution in the middle of the day, grabbing eight pieces of priceless Napoleonic jewellery and vanishing into Paris traffic on humble scooters may seem like the most audacious of crimes, executed for global fame and subsequent Hollywood film treatments.

Specialists who observe trends in global cultural theft, however, see Sunday morning’s robbery at the Louvre as something more prosaic: the most recent in a string of smash-and-grab thefts focused more on the material value of valuable gems or materials than the historical importance, continuing a pattern that has appeared over the last decade in Europe, Britain and the US. The location, they propose, would have been of lesser importance to the thieves.

“You may ask why thieves who want to steal expensive jewellery are entering a globally renowned museum rather than a Cartier store,” stated Christopher A Marinello. “It's straightforward: it’s because nowadays a high-end boutique is more secure.”

A series of violent retail store thefts mean that many stores have strengthened their protection in recent years, with armed guards on their premises and wares no longer shown overnight. Museums, meanwhile, look vulnerable, partly because of the in-built factor of being accessible institutions in older structures, and partly the financial situation in many western countries.

“Since Covid, authorities across the globe have cut back on law enforcement and the arts funding,” said Marinello. “With criminals entering the Louvre, it shows how vulnerable our museums have become. This is a difficult time to be a museum.”

The robbery of the items – featuring jewelry pieces made up of precious stones and hundreds of gems, the tiara of a historical figure featuring nearly 2,000 diamonds and a extremely expensive crown once possessed by Napoleon III’s wife that the thieves left by the roadside on their way out – has inevitably been compared with the 1911 theft of the Mona Lisa from the same museum, performed by the Italian handyman Vincenzo Peruggia.

More relevant points of reference may be the 2019 theft of valuables from Dresden’s Green Vault Museum worth over millions, the taking of a £4.75m valuable object from a UK landmark the same year, the recent heist of a large gold coin from a European museum or even a series of thefts of sports memorabilia from US mining museums.

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

If the artefacts were to stay whole, experts say, the criminals would find it hard to find a buyer. “It's impossible to trade something as immediately identifiable as the museum's gems on the legal marketplace”, said Lynda Albertson of the Association for Research into Crimes against Art.

“They are too well-known, particularly given the Ministry of Culture has released images of the pieces. Even a individual buyer or an auction house would want to see documentation confirming proper ownership before handling such striking pieces.”

In the past, museums were often reluctant to go public about the loss of well-known art pieces and would remain quiet out of shame. Now, as cultural robberies are more widely publicised, the storage 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 plan to conceal it, perhaps by passing it around dangerous individuals,” noted Marinello. “And you’re constantly exposed to the risk of an accomplice telling the police to cash in a reward.”

For comparable factors, an art detective said it was vanishingly unlikely that the theft had been ordered. “Stolen to order is something from films,” he said. “No one would handle these items. It’s all around the world and in all the newspapers. If you buy this, if you are apprehended, you end up in prison. You can't display it to your friends, you cannot leave it to your children.”

Altering taken items by melting down or reshaping does reduce the value. When it comes to diamonds, it also comes with significant danger because modern cutting techniques give stones a bigger and lighter appearance, and older-style stones would either draw unwanted attention or reduce value for a concealment.

Importantly, however, dismantling or re-cutting removes the proof of the theft. “I suspect that the Louvre thieves will try to bring the stolen goods to places with gem knowledge like a country, another nation or even as close as Antwerp, and find someone to cut out the gems,” suggested Marinello.

The robbery at the Louvre has already brought up concerns about protective steps at the museum, with a leaked state auditor report expected to be released soon criticising “significant” and “persistent” delays in updating systems and noting that security cameras were lacking in many rooms. But specialists say displaying precious items in older structures with a constant flow of visitors comes with dangers that are not possible to remove entirely.

“Older structures are much harder to protect,” explained an art crime professor. “They often have nice big street-facing windows that allows for criminals to escape, and there may be building protection statutes in place that mean you are unable to install them with proper bulletproof glass.”

The best security systems for structures should be designed “like a fortress”, said a security advisor. “It should include multiple levels to repel attackers.”

Contemporary structures are fitted with advanced external CCTV cameras or in-built vibration sensors that alert about a smashed window in real time, but old museums may be reluctant to alter their appearance. Detection devices can be hard to fit 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 took place 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 before 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 effectively, but it has also provided thieves new tools with which to bypass security measures. In Paris, the robbers accessed the museum’s first-floor window with a mobile equipment and cut through a glass pane with a electric tool.

An author said the discussion in France about the historic building had mostly focused on crowd control in the past decade, and not as much on protection.

The museum has an in-house brigade of about fifty full-time firefighters, but their purpose is mostly to safeguard the collection from blazes and flooding. “There is no quick reaction team,” Sciolino said. “Ultimately, the safety of the Louvre all depends on government support and money, and currently France simply has no money.”