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Breaking into the planet's most popular art institution in broad daylight, grabbing eight pieces of priceless historical gems and vanishing into Paris traffic on humble scooters may seem like the most audacious of crimes, carried out for global fame and subsequent movie adaptations.

Experts who study trends in global cultural theft, however, see Sunday morning’s heist 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 metals than the artifacts’ significance, continuing a pattern that has emerged over the last ten years in Germany, the UK and the US. The venue, they propose, would have been of secondary concern to the thieves.

“You may ask why thieves who want to steal valuable jewellery are breaking into a world-famous museum rather than a Cartier store,” stated Christopher A Marinello. “The answer is simple: it’s because nowadays a Cartier store is better protected.”

A series of aggressive retail store thefts indicate that many outlets have strengthened their protection in recent years, with security personnel on their premises and wares no longer kept on display overnight. Cultural institutions, on the other hand, look more exposed, partly because of the inherent reason of being public-facing institutions in historic buildings, and partly the financial situation in many western countries.

“After the pandemic, authorities across the globe have reduced spending on police and the culture sector,” 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 objects – including necklaces made up of precious stones and 631 diamonds, the tiara of a historical figure containing 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 naturally drawn comparisons with the historical theft of the famous painting from the Louvre, performed by the worker the thief.

More relevant comparisons may be the 2019 burglary of valuables from a German institution worth over millions, the taking of a multi-million pound valuable object from Blenheim Palace the same year, the 2017 robbery of a valuable item from Berlin’s Bode Museum or even a spate of thefts of collector items from American institutions.

“There’s a simple pattern here,” said Marinello. “Break in, take items, and dismantle them as rapidly as possible.”

If the items were to remain intact, specialists say, the criminals would find it hard to find a buyer. “It's impossible to trade something as recognizable as the Louvre’s jewels on the legal marketplace”, commented Lynda Albertson of the Association for Research into Crimes against Art.

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

In the previous years, museums were often hesitant to announce publicly about the loss of well-known art pieces and would remain quiet out of embarrassment. These days, as art thefts are more widely publicised, the keeping and selling of taken items is dangerous for any criminal.

“Taking a famous painting, it has to remain intact or it becomes worthless, and you have to conceive of a scheme to conceal it, maybe by passing it around dangerous individuals,” said 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 robbery had been ordered. “Stolen to order is something from films,” he said. “Nobody would touch this. It’s all around the world 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 taken items by melting down or re-cutting does reduce the worth. When it comes to diamonds, it also comes with considerable risk because contemporary methods give gems a larger and lighter surface area, and older-style stones would either attract notice or barter the price down for a concealment.

Crucially, however, melting down or reshaping eliminates the evidence of the crime. “My guess is that the Louvre thieves will try to take the items to places with gem knowledge like a country, another nation or even as nearby as Antwerp, and find someone to remove the gems,” suggested Marinello.

The heist at the Louvre has already brought up concerns about protective steps at the institution, with a leaked state auditor report expected to be released soon pointing out “significant” and “ongoing” slow progress in modernizing systems and noting that security cameras were lacking in many rooms. But security experts say showing valuable objects in older structures with a constant flow of guests comes with risks that are not possible to remove entirely.

“Historic buildings are much harder to secure,” explained Erin Thompson. “Many of them have nice big street-facing windows that allows for criminals to escape, and there may be preservation laws in place that mean you can’t fit them with secure windows.”

The best protective measures for buildings should be designed “as a stronghold”, noted a security advisor. “It should include multiple levels to repel intruders.”

Modern buildings are fitted with advanced external CCTV cameras or in-built seismic detectors that raise alarm about a smashed window in immediately, but historic institutions may be reluctant to uglify their exteriors. Detection devices can be difficult to install to decorated surfaces. Sensors may also have to be disabled during the daytime as crowds walk through a museum.

The schedule of the Louvre raid, which occurred between morning hours in Paris, was common of recent thefts, Stürmann said. “There’s a good reason why thefts tend to happen at either start or end of day. Frequently when security change their shifts and prior to the museum is full of visitors who effectively act as extra protection.”

Technological progress may have thrown up new gadgets that can raise the alarm more rapidly and efficiently, but it has also provided thieves new methods with which to bypass protections. In the city, the thieves reached the museum’s upper level with a mobile equipment and breached a window with a battery-powered disc cutter.

An author said the conversation in France about the historic building had mostly centered on crowd control in recent years, and not as much on security.

The institution has an in-house brigade of about fifty permanent emergency personnel, but their purpose is mostly to safeguard the artworks from fires and water damage. “There is no rapid-response unit,” Sciolino said. “In the end, the safety of the Louvre all depends on government support and money, and at present France lacks sufficient money.”