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Breaking into the world’s most-visited art institution in broad daylight, grabbing eight items of invaluable Napoleonic jewellery and vanishing into Paris traffic on humble scooters may seem like the boldest of crimes, carried out for international notoriety and subsequent movie adaptations.

Experts who observe trends in international art crime, however, see Sunday morning’s robbery at the Louvre as a more practical matter: the latest in a series of smash-and-grab thefts focused more on the material value of valuable gems or metals than the historical importance, perpetuating a trend that has appeared over the last decade in Europe, the UK and the US. The venue, they suggest, would have been of secondary concern to the criminals.

“One might wonder why criminals who want to take valuable jewellery are entering a world-famous museum rather than a Cartier store,” said Christopher A Marinello. “The answer is simple: it’s because these days a high-end boutique is better protected.”

A series of violent jewellery shop thefts mean that many stores have beefed up their protection in the past few years, with armed guards on their locations and wares no longer shown overnight. Museums, meanwhile, look vulnerable, in part because of the in-built reason of being accessible institutions in older structures, and partly the current economic climate in many developed nations.

“After the pandemic, governments across the globe have cut back on law enforcement and the culture sector,” noted Marinello. “If thieves can get into the Louvre, it demonstrates how vulnerable our institutions have become. This is a horrible time to be a museum.”

The robbery of the items – featuring necklaces made up of precious stones and 631 diamonds, the crown of Empress Eugénie containing nearly 2,000 diamonds and a hugely valuable diadem once possessed by a royal that the thieves dropped by the street on their way out – has naturally drawn comparisons with the historical theft of the famous painting from the same museum, performed by the worker the thief.

More relevant comparisons may be the 2019 burglary of jewellery from Dresden’s Green Vault Museum worth over millions, the theft of a £4.75m gold toilet from Blenheim Palace the that year, the 2017 robbery of a valuable item from Berlin’s Bode Museum or even a spate of robberies 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, experts say, the thieves would struggle to find a buyer. “There’s no way to sell something as immediately identifiable as the museum's gems on the licit market”, commented an art crime researcher of the Association for Research into Crimes against Art.

“They are too well-known, especially given the cultural authorities has published photos of the items. Even a individual buyer or an auction house would want to see paperwork establishing legal possession 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 reported on, the storage and sale of stolen art is risky business for any criminal.

“If you steal a famous painting, it has to remain intact or it becomes worthless, and you have to devise a scheme to conceal it, maybe by passing it around dangerous individuals,” said Marinello. “And you’re constantly exposed to the risk of an partner informing authorities to collect a ransom.”

For comparable factors, an investigator said it was highly improbable that the robbery had been ordered. “Commissioned theft is something from Hollywood movies,” he said. “No one would handle these items. It’s all around the world and in all the newspapers. If you acquire these, 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 melting down or re-cutting does reduce the value. When it comes to diamonds, it also comes with considerable risk because modern cutting techniques give stones a larger and brighter surface area, and antique-cut stones would either attract notice or reduce value for a coverup.

Importantly, however, melting down or reshaping removes the evidence of the theft. “I suspect that the Louvre thieves will try to bring the stolen goods to places with diamond expertise like a country, another nation or even as close as a city, and locate an expert to remove the gems,” suggested Marinello.

The heist at the Louvre has already raised questions about protective steps at the museum, with a unauthorized state auditor report expected to be published next month pointing out “significant” and “persistent” delays in modernizing systems and observing that security cameras were missing in many rooms. But security experts say showing valuable objects in historic buildings with a constant flow of visitors comes with dangers that are impossible to remove entirely.

“Historic buildings are more difficult to protect,” said an art crime professor. “Many of them have large accessible 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 most solid security systems for structures should be designed “like a fortress”, said a security advisor. “There should be several layers to repel attackers.”

Contemporary structures are fitted with state-of-the-art surveillance systems or in-built seismic detectors that alert about a broken glass in real time, but old museums may be hesitant to alter their appearance. Detection devices can be difficult to install to stuccoed ceilings. Sensors 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 took place between morning hours local time, was common of recent thefts, Stürmann said. “It's logical why thefts tend to happen at either opening or closing times. Frequently when security rotate and before the museum is crowded who actually act as additional security staff.”

Technological progress may have thrown up new gadgets that can raise the alarm more rapidly and effectively, but it has also given robbers new tools with which to circumvent protections. In Paris, the thieves reached the museum’s first-floor window with a vehicle-mounted ladder and cut through a glass pane with a battery-powered disc cutter.

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

The museum has an in-house brigade of about fifty permanent emergency personnel, but their mission is mostly to protect the artworks from blazes and flooding. “There is no rapid-response unit,” Sciolino said. “In the end, the security of the Louvre all depends on government support and funding, and at present France lacks sufficient money.”