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Breaking into the planet's most popular museum in broad daylight, grabbing eight pieces of priceless historical gems and vanishing into Paris traffic on simple scooters may seem like the boldest of crimes, executed for international notoriety and subsequent movie adaptations.

Specialists who study trends in international art crime, however, see Sunday morning’s robbery at the Louvre as something more prosaic: the most recent in a string of quick-hit thefts centered more on the monetary worth of precious stones or materials than the historical importance, perpetuating a pattern that has appeared over the last ten years in Germany, the UK and the US. The venue, they suggest, would have been of lesser importance to the thieves.

“One might wonder why thieves who want to steal expensive jewellery are entering a globally renowned museum rather than a luxury jewelry store,” said Christopher A Marinello. “It's straightforward: it’s because these days a high-end boutique is more secure.”

A spate of violent jewellery shop thefts mean that many outlets have strengthened 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 factor of being accessible institutions in older structures, and partly the current economic climate in many western countries.

“After the pandemic, authorities across the world have reduced spending on police and the culture sector,” said 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 – featuring jewelry pieces made up of precious stones and 631 diamonds, the tiara of a historical figure containing nearly 2,000 diamonds and a hugely valuable diadem once owned by a royal that the robbers dropped by the roadside on their way out – has inevitably drawn comparisons with the historical theft of the Mona Lisa from the Louvre, performed by the Italian handyman Vincenzo Peruggia.

More relevant points of reference may be the recent burglary of jewellery from a German institution worth over €113m, the taking of a £4.75m valuable object from Blenheim Palace the that year, the 2017 robbery of a valuable item from Berlin’s Bode Museum or even a spate of robberies of collector items from US mining museums.

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

If the items were to stay whole, experts say, the criminals would find it hard to sell them. “It's impossible to trade something as recognizable as the Louvre’s jewels on the licit market”, said Lynda Albertson of the Association for Research into Crimes against Art.

“They would be immediately recognised, especially given the Ministry of Culture has published photos of the pieces. Even a individual buyer or an sales venue would want to see paperwork confirming proper ownership before touching such remarkable pieces.”

In the previous years, institutions were often reluctant to announce publicly about the loss of famous works of art and would remain quiet out of shame. These days, as cultural robberies are more reported on, the storage and sale of taken items is dangerous for any criminal.

“Taking a famous painting, it has to stay complete or it becomes worthless, and you have to conceive of a plan to keep it in hiding, maybe by moving it among dangerous individuals,” said Marinello. “And you’re constantly exposed to the risk of an accomplice telling the police to collect 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 acquire these, if you get caught, you end up in prison. You can't display it to your friends, you cannot leave it to your children.”

Modifying taken items by dismantling or reshaping does lower the worth. When it comes to diamonds, it also comes with significant danger because contemporary methods give gems a larger and brighter surface area, and older-style stones would either attract notice or reduce value for a concealment.

Crucially, however, dismantling or re-cutting eliminates the evidence of the theft. “My guess is that the robbers will try to bring the items to places with diamond expertise like Israel, India or even as close as a city, and find someone to cut out the stones,” suggested Marinello.

The robbery at the Louvre has already brought up concerns about protective steps at the institution, with a leaked state auditor report expected to be published soon pointing out “significant” and “ongoing” slow progress in updating systems and noting that surveillance were missing in multiple areas. But security experts say showing valuable objects in historic buildings with a steady stream of guests comes with risks that are not possible to remove entirely.

“Historic buildings are more difficult to protect,” explained an art crime professor. “Many of them have large accessible windows that makes it easy for criminals to escape, 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 buildings should be designed “as a stronghold”, noted a security advisor. “It should include several layers to repel intruders.”

Modern buildings are fitted with advanced surveillance systems or in-built vibration sensors that alert about a broken glass in immediately, but old museums 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 schedule of the Louvre raid, which took place between morning hours local time, was typical of modern robberies, Stürmann said. “There’s a good reason why thefts tend to happen at either opening or closing times. It’s often when guards change their shifts and prior to the museum is full of visitors who actually act as extra protection.”

Advances in technology may have introduced new devices that can notify more quickly and efficiently, but it has also given robbers new tools with which to circumvent security measures. In the city, the thieves reached the museum’s upper level with a vehicle-mounted ladder and breached a glass pane with a battery-powered disc cutter.

Elaine Sciolino said the conversation in the country about the historic building had mostly centered on visitor management in recent years, and less on protection.

The museum has an in-house brigade of about 50 full-time emergency personnel, but their purpose is mainly to safeguard the artworks from blazes and flooding. “There isn't a rapid-response unit,” Sciolino said. “In the end, the safety of the Louvre all comes down to government support and funding, and currently the nation simply has no money.”