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Entering the world’s most-visited museum in broad daylight, taking eight items of invaluable historical gems and vanishing into Paris traffic on simple scooters may seem like the most audacious of crimes, carried out for international notoriety and subsequent Hollywood film treatments.

Experts who study patterns in global cultural theft, however, see Sunday morning’s heist 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 valuable gems or materials than the historical importance, perpetuating a pattern that has appeared over the last decade in Germany, the UK and the US. The venue, they propose, would have been of secondary concern to the thieves.

“One might wonder why criminals who want to take valuable jewellery are entering a globally renowned museum rather than a luxury jewelry store,” stated Christopher A Marinello. “The answer is simple: it’s because nowadays a Cartier store is better protected.”

A series of violent retail store thefts indicate that many stores have beefed up their security in the past few years, with armed guards on their premises and merchandise no longer kept on display overnight. Cultural institutions, meanwhile, look more exposed, in part because of the inherent reason of being public-facing institutions in historic buildings, and also the financial situation in many developed nations.

“After the pandemic, authorities across the globe have reduced spending on police and the arts funding,” 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 items – including jewelry pieces made up of eight sapphires and 631 diamonds, the tiara of Empress Eugénie containing 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 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 2019 burglary of valuables 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 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, specialists say, the thieves would struggle to find a buyer. “There’s no way to sell something as immediately identifiable as the Louvre’s jewels on the licit market”, said an art crime researcher of the a relevant organization.

“They would be immediately recognised, particularly given the Ministry of Culture has released images of the items. Even a individual buyer or an auction house would want to see documentation establishing proper ownership before touching such remarkable pieces.”

In the past, institutions were often reluctant to announce publicly about the disappearance of famous art pieces and would stay silent out of shame. Now, as cultural robberies are more widely publicised, the storage and sale of stolen art is dangerous for any criminal.

“If you steal a Picasso, it has to stay complete or it becomes valueless, and you have to conceive of a scheme to conceal it, maybe by moving it among dangerous individuals,” said Marinello. “And you’re constantly exposed to the risk of an accomplice informing authorities to collect a ransom.”

For comparable factors, an investigator said it was vanishingly unlikely that the robbery had been commissioned. “Stolen to order is something from Hollywood movies,” he said. “No one would handle these items. It's global news and in all the media. If you buy this, if you get caught, you go to jail. You can't display it to your acquaintances, you cannot leave it to your family.”

Altering taken items by melting down or re-cutting does lower the worth. When it comes to diamonds, it also comes with significant danger because modern cutting techniques give gems a larger and brighter surface area, and older-style stones would either attract notice or reduce value for a coverup.

Crucially, however, dismantling or reshaping removes the proof of the crime. “I suspect that the robbers will try to take the items to locations with gem knowledge like a country, another nation or even as close as Antwerp, and locate an expert to remove the stones,” suggested Marinello.

The robbery at the Louvre has already brought up concerns about security measures at the institution, with a unauthorized state auditor report expected to be released next month pointing out “significant” and “ongoing” slow progress in updating equipment and noting that surveillance were missing in multiple areas. But specialists say displaying valuable objects in historic buildings with a constant flow of visitors comes with dangers that are not possible to eliminate completely.

“Historic buildings are much harder to secure,” explained an art crime professor. “They often have large accessible windows that allows 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 structures should be conceptualised “like a fortress”, noted a security advisor. “There should be several layers to deter attackers.”

Contemporary structures are fitted with advanced external CCTV cameras or in-built vibration sensors that raise alarm about a smashed window in immediately, but historic institutions may be reluctant to alter their appearance. Laser scanners can be difficult to install to stuccoed ceilings. Sensors may also have to be turned off during the day as hordes of visitors walk through a museum.

The schedule of the robbery, which occurred between 9.30am and 9.40am local time, was typical of modern robberies, Stürmann said. “It's logical why thefts tend to happen at either start or end of day. It’s often when guards change their shifts and prior to the museum is crowded who actually act as extra protection.”

Technological progress may have introduced new gadgets that can notify more quickly and effectively, but it has also given robbers new methods with which to circumvent protections. In the city, the robbers accessed the museum’s first-floor window with a vehicle-mounted ladder and cut through a window with a electric tool.

Elaine Sciolino said the conversation in France about the 232-year-old building had mostly focused on visitor management in recent years, and less on security.

The institution has an on-site brigade of about fifty permanent emergency personnel, but their mission is mainly to protect the collection from fires and water damage. “There isn't a rapid-response unit,” Sciolino said. “In the end, the safety of the Louvre all depends on political will and funding, and currently the nation lacks sufficient money.”