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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 boldest of crimes, executed for international notoriety and subsequent Hollywood film treatments.

Specialists who study patterns in international art crime, however, see the recent robbery at the Louvre as something more prosaic: the most recent in a series of smash-and-grab thefts centered more on the material value of valuable gems or materials than the artifacts’ significance, continuing a pattern that has emerged over the last ten years in Europe, the UK and the US. The location, they propose, would have been of secondary concern to the criminals.

“One might wonder why criminals who want to take valuable jewellery are breaking into a globally renowned museum rather than a luxury jewelry store,” stated Christopher A Marinello. “The answer is simple: it’s because these days a Cartier store is more secure.”

A series of aggressive retail store thefts indicate that many outlets have strengthened their protection in the past few years, with security personnel on their premises and wares no longer kept on display overnight. Museums, meanwhile, look more exposed, in part because of the inherent reason of being public-facing institutions in historic buildings, and partly the financial situation in many developed nations.

“After the pandemic, governments across the globe have reduced spending on law enforcement and the arts funding,” said Marinello. “If thieves can get into the Louvre, it demonstrates how at risk our institutions have become. This is a horrible time to be a museum.”

The theft of the objects – including necklaces made up of eight sapphires and hundreds of gems, the tiara of a historical figure containing thousands of diamonds and a hugely valuable crown once possessed by a royal that the thieves dropped by the roadside on their way out – has inevitably been compared with the historical theft of the Mona Lisa from the same museum, performed by the Italian handyman Vincenzo Peruggia.

More relevant points of reference may be the 2019 theft of jewellery from a German institution worth over €113m, the theft of a multi-million pound gold toilet from Blenheim Palace the that year, the recent heist of a large gold coin from a European museum or even a series of thefts of sports memorabilia from US mining museums.

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

If the artefacts were to stay whole, specialists say, the thieves would find it hard to sell them. “There’s no way to trade something as recognizable as the museum's gems on the legal marketplace”, commented an art crime researcher of the Association for Research into Crimes against Art.

“They are too well-known, particularly given the Ministry of Culture has published photos of the items. Even a private collector or an sales venue would want to see paperwork establishing legal possession before touching such striking pieces.”

In the previous years, institutions were often hesitant to announce publicly about the disappearance of famous art pieces and would stay silent out of shame. These days, as cultural robberies are more reported on, the keeping and selling of stolen art is risky business for any lawbreaker.

“Taking a famous painting, it has to stay complete or it becomes worthless, and you have to conceive of a scheme to keep it in hiding, perhaps by passing it around difficult criminal actors,” noted Marinello. “And you’re constantly exposed to the risk of an partner telling the police to collect a ransom.”

For similar reasons, an investigator said it was vanishingly unlikely that the robbery had been commissioned. “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 buy this, if you are apprehended, you go to jail. You can't display it to your friends, you cannot bequeath it to your children.”

Modifying stolen works by dismantling or re-cutting does reduce the value. When it comes to gems, it also comes with significant danger because contemporary methods give gems a larger and lighter surface area, and antique-cut stones would either draw unwanted attention or reduce value for a concealment.

Crucially, however, melting down or re-cutting removes the evidence of the theft. “My guess is that the robbers will try to bring the items to places with gem knowledge like Israel, India or even as close as Antwerp, and locate an expert to cut out the stones,” suggested Marinello.

The robbery at the Louvre has already brought up concerns about security measures at the museum, with a unauthorized state auditor report expected to be published soon pointing out “significant” and “persistent” slow progress in updating equipment and noting that surveillance were missing in multiple areas. But security experts say displaying valuable objects in historic buildings with a steady stream of visitors comes with risks that are not possible to remove entirely.

“Older structures are much harder to protect,” said an art crime professor. “Many of them have nice big street-facing windows that allows for thieves to escape, and there may be preservation laws in place that mean you can’t fit them with proper bulletproof glass.”

The most solid security systems for buildings should be conceptualised “as a stronghold”, said Peter Stürmann. “It should include several layers to repel intruders.”

Modern buildings are fitted with advanced surveillance systems or integrated vibration sensors that raise alarm about a broken glass in immediately, but historic institutions may be reluctant to alter their appearance. Laser scanners can be difficult to fit to stuccoed ceilings. Motion and sound detectors may also have to be disabled during the day as hordes of visitors stomp through a museum.

The timing of the Louvre raid, which occurred between morning hours in Paris, was typical of modern robberies, Stürmann said. “It's logical why robberies tend to happen at either start or end of day. Frequently when guards rotate and prior to the museum is crowded who actually act as additional security staff.”

Advances in technology may have thrown up new gadgets that can notify more rapidly and effectively, but it has also provided thieves new methods with which to bypass protections. In the city, the thieves reached the museum’s first-floor window with a vehicle-mounted ladder and breached a window with a battery-powered disc cutter.

Elaine Sciolino said the discussion in the country about the 232-year-old building had mostly focused on crowd control in recent years, and less on protection.

The institution has an in-house brigade of about fifty permanent firefighters, but their purpose is mainly to protect the artworks from blazes and flooding. “There isn't a quick reaction team,” Sciolino said. “In the end, the security of the Louvre all depends on government support and funding, and at present the nation lacks sufficient resources.”