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Entering the world’s most-visited museum in broad daylight, grabbing eight pieces of priceless historical gems and vanishing into the city traffic on humble scooters may seem like the most audacious of crimes, carried out for global fame and ensuing Hollywood film treatments.

Specialists who study trends in international art crime, however, see Sunday morning’s heist at the Louvre as a more practical matter: the latest in a series of smash-and-grab thefts centered more on the monetary worth of valuable gems or metals than the historical importance, continuing a trend that has emerged over the last decade in Germany, Britain and the US. The venue, they suggest, would have been of secondary concern to the criminals.

“One might wonder why thieves 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 spate of violent jewellery shop thefts mean that many outlets have beefed up their security in recent years, with armed guards on their premises and merchandise no longer shown overnight. Museums, 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 developed nations.

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

The theft of the objects – featuring jewelry pieces made up of precious stones and hundreds of gems, the tiara of Empress Eugénie featuring thousands of diamonds and a extremely expensive crown once owned by a royal that the thieves left by the roadside on their way out – has naturally been compared with the historical theft of the famous painting from the same museum, carried out by the Italian handyman Vincenzo Peruggia.

Better points of reference may be the recent burglary of jewellery from a German institution worth over €113m, the taking of a multi-million pound gold toilet from a UK landmark the same year, the recent robbery of a large gold coin from a European museum or even a series of robberies of collector items from American institutions.

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

If the artefacts were to remain intact, experts say, the thieves would find it hard to sell them. “There’s no way to trade something as immediately identifiable as the Louvre’s jewels on the legal marketplace”, commented Lynda Albertson of the a relevant organization.

“They are too well-known, particularly given the cultural authorities has published photos of the pieces. Even a individual buyer or an sales venue would want to see paperwork establishing proper ownership before handling such striking pieces.”

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

“If you steal a famous painting, it has to stay complete or it becomes worthless, and you have to devise a scheme to keep it in hiding, maybe by moving it among difficult criminal actors,” noted Marinello. “There's ongoing risk to the danger of an accomplice telling the police to cash in a reward.”

For similar reasons, an investigator said it was vanishingly unlikely that the theft had been ordered. “Stolen to order is something from Hollywood movies,” he said. “No one would handle these items. It's global news and in all the newspapers. If you buy this, if you get caught, you go to jail. You can't display it to your friends, you cannot bequeath it to your family.”

Altering taken items by dismantling or reshaping does lower the worth. When it comes to diamonds, it also comes with considerable risk because contemporary cutting techniques give stones a larger and brighter appearance, and antique-cut stones would either attract notice or barter the price down for a concealment.

Crucially, however, dismantling or re-cutting removes the proof of the crime. “My guess is that the Louvre thieves will try to bring the stolen goods to places with gem knowledge like Israel, another nation or even as close as Antwerp, and find someone 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 “considerable” and “persistent” delays in updating systems and noting that surveillance were lacking in multiple areas. But security experts say displaying valuable objects in historic buildings with a constant flow of guests comes with risks that are not possible to remove entirely.

“Historic buildings are much harder to secure,” said an art crime professor. “Many of them have large accessible windows that allows for thieves 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 conceptualised “as a stronghold”, said a security advisor. “It should include several layers to deter intruders.”

Modern buildings are fitted with state-of-the-art surveillance systems or integrated vibration sensors that raise alarm about a broken glass in real time, but old museums may be hesitant to alter their appearance. Laser scanners can be hard to fit to decorated surfaces. Sensors may also have to be disabled during the daytime as crowds stomp through a museum.

The timing of the robbery, which took place between morning hours in Paris, was common of modern robberies, Stürmann said. “It's logical why thefts tend to happen at either opening or closing times. It’s often when guards rotate and prior to the museum is full of visitors who effectively act as extra protection.”

Advances in technology may have introduced new devices that can notify more rapidly and effectively, but it has also given robbers new methods with which to circumvent protections. In the city, the thieves reached the museum’s upper level with a vehicle-mounted ladder and breached a window with a battery-powered disc cutter.

Elaine Sciolino said the conversation in the country about the historic building had mostly focused on visitor management in the past decade, and not as much on security.

The museum has an in-house team of about fifty full-time emergency personnel, but their mission is mostly to protect the artworks from fires and water damage. “There isn't a rapid-response unit,” Sciolino said. “Ultimately, the security of the Louvre all comes down to government support and money, and currently France simply has no resources.”