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Entering the world’s most-visited art institution in broad daylight, grabbing eight items of invaluable Napoleonic jewellery and disappearing into Paris traffic on simple scooters may seem like the boldest of crimes, carried out for international notoriety and subsequent Hollywood film treatments.

Specialists who observe trends in global cultural theft, however, see the recent heist at the Louvre as something more prosaic: the most recent in a series of smash-and-grab thefts focused more on the material value of valuable gems or materials than the artifacts’ significance, perpetuating a pattern that has emerged over the last decade in Europe, Britain and the US. The venue, they propose, would have been of secondary concern to the thieves.

“You may ask why criminals who want to steal valuable jewellery are entering a world-famous museum rather than a Cartier store,” said Christopher A Marinello. “It's straightforward: it’s because nowadays a high-end boutique is better protected.”

A spate of aggressive jewellery shop thefts indicate that many stores have beefed up their security in recent years, with security personnel on their locations and wares no longer shown overnight. Museums, meanwhile, look vulnerable, in part because of the inherent reason of being public-facing institutions in older structures, and also the current economic climate in many western countries.

“After the pandemic, governments across the globe have cut back on police and the culture sector,” noted 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 robbery of the objects – featuring necklaces made up of eight sapphires and hundreds of gems, the tiara of a historical figure containing thousands of diamonds and a extremely expensive diadem once owned by Napoleon III’s wife that the robbers left by the street on their way out – has naturally been compared with the 1911 theft of the Mona Lisa from the same museum, performed by the Italian handyman Vincenzo Peruggia.

Better points of reference may be the recent theft of valuables from Dresden’s Green Vault Museum worth over millions, the theft of a £4.75m gold toilet from a UK landmark the that year, the recent heist of a valuable item from Berlin’s Bode Museum or even a series of robberies of sports memorabilia from US mining museums.

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

If the items were to stay whole, experts say, the thieves would struggle to sell them. “There’s no way to sell something as recognizable as the museum's gems on the legal marketplace”, commented 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 private collector or an sales venue would want to see documentation establishing legal possession before touching such remarkable pieces.”

In the previous years, museums were often hesitant to announce publicly about the disappearance of well-known works of art and would remain quiet out of embarrassment. These days, as cultural robberies are more widely publicised, the keeping and sale of taken items is dangerous for any lawbreaker.

“If you steal a Picasso, it has to remain intact or it becomes worthless, and you have to conceive of a scheme to conceal it, perhaps by moving it among dangerous individuals,” noted Marinello. “And you’re constantly exposed to the risk of an accomplice informing authorities to cash in a ransom.”

For similar reasons, an art detective said it was vanishingly unlikely that the robbery had been ordered. “Commissioned theft is something from Hollywood movies,” he said. “Nobody would touch this. It's global news and in all the media. If you buy this, if you are apprehended, you go to jail. You can't display it to your friends, you cannot leave it to your family.”

Modifying taken items by dismantling or re-cutting does reduce the value. When it comes to diamonds, it also comes with considerable risk because modern cutting techniques give gems a larger and brighter surface area, and older-style stones would either draw unwanted attention or barter the price down for a concealment.

Crucially, however, melting down or re-cutting eliminates the evidence of the theft. “I suspect that the Louvre thieves will try to take the stolen goods to locations with diamond expertise like Israel, India or even as close as Antwerp, and locate an expert to cut out the stones,” suggested Marinello.

The heist at the Louvre has already raised questions about protective steps at the institution, with a leaked state auditor report expected to be published soon pointing out “significant” and “persistent” delays in modernizing systems and noting that surveillance were lacking in many rooms. But specialists say showing precious items in older structures with a constant flow of visitors comes with dangers that are not possible to eliminate completely.

“Older structures are more difficult to protect,” explained Erin Thompson. “They often have nice big street-facing windows that allows for thieves to escape, and there may be building protection statutes in place that mean you are unable to install them with secure windows.”

The most solid security systems for buildings should be conceptualised “like a fortress”, said a security advisor. “There should be several layers to repel intruders.”

Contemporary structures are fitted with state-of-the-art external CCTV cameras or integrated seismic detectors that alert about a smashed window in real time, but old museums may be hesitant to alter their appearance. Laser scanners can be difficult 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 schedule of the Louvre raid, which occurred between morning hours in Paris, was typical of recent thefts, Stürmann said. “There’s a good reason why robberies tend to happen at either opening or closing times. Frequently when security rotate and prior to the museum is full of visitors who effectively act as extra protection.”

Advances in technology may have introduced new gadgets that can raise the alarm more rapidly and effectively, but it has also given thieves new tools with which to circumvent protections. In the city, the thieves 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 primarily centered on visitor management in the past decade, and less on security.

The institution has an on-site team of about fifty permanent emergency personnel, but their purpose is mostly to protect the artworks from blazes and water damage. “There is no rapid-response unit,” Sciolino said. “Ultimately, the security of the Louvre all comes down to government support and funding, and at present France lacks sufficient money.”