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Entering the world’s most-visited museum in the middle of the day, taking 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 international notoriety and ensuing Hollywood film treatments.

Experts who study trends 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 precious stones or materials than the artifacts’ significance, perpetuating a pattern that has appeared over the last ten years in Europe, the UK and the US. The location, they propose, would have been of lesser importance to the criminals.

“You may ask why criminals who want to steal valuable jewellery are breaking into a globally renowned museum rather than a Cartier store,” stated Christopher A Marinello. “It's straightforward: it’s because these days a Cartier store is better protected.”

A spate of aggressive retail store thefts indicate that many stores have strengthened their protection in the past few years, with security personnel on their premises and wares no longer shown overnight. Museums, on the other hand, look more exposed, in part because of the inherent reason of being public-facing institutions in older structures, and partly the current economic climate in many developed nations.

“Since Covid, authorities across the globe have cut back on police and the arts funding,” noted Marinello. “With criminals entering the Louvre, it shows how vulnerable our museums have become. This is a difficult time to be a museum.”

The theft of the objects – including necklaces made up of precious stones and hundreds of gems, the crown of a historical figure containing nearly 2,000 diamonds and a hugely valuable crown once possessed by Napoleon III’s wife that the thieves dropped by the roadside on their way out – has naturally been compared with the historical theft of the famous painting from the Louvre, performed by the Italian handyman Vincenzo Peruggia.

Better comparisons may be the recent burglary of valuables from Dresden’s Green Vault Museum worth over €113m, the taking of a multi-million pound valuable object from Blenheim Palace the that year, the 2017 robbery of a large gold coin from Berlin’s Bode Museum or even a series of thefts of collector items from American institutions.

“There’s a simple pattern here,” said Marinello. “Smash, grab, and melt it down as quickly as possible.”

If the items were to stay whole, specialists say, the thieves would struggle to sell them. “There’s no way to trade something as immediately identifiable as the museum's gems on the legal marketplace”, said Lynda Albertson of the a relevant organization.

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

In the past, institutions were often reluctant to announce publicly about the disappearance of famous works of art and would remain quiet out of shame. These days, as art thefts 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 remain intact or it becomes worthless, and you have to devise a plan to conceal it, maybe by passing it around difficult criminal actors,” noted Marinello. “There's ongoing risk to the risk of an accomplice informing authorities to collect a ransom.”

For comparable factors, an investigator said it was highly improbable that the theft had been commissioned. “Stolen to order is something from Hollywood movies,” 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 end up in prison. You can't display it to your acquaintances, you cannot leave it to your children.”

Modifying taken items by melting down or reshaping does reduce the value. When it comes to gems, it also comes with significant danger because modern cutting techniques give gems a bigger and lighter surface area, and antique-cut stones would either attract notice or barter the price down for a concealment.

Crucially, however, dismantling or reshaping removes the evidence of the crime. “I suspect that the Louvre thieves will try to take the items to locations with diamond expertise like Israel, India or even as close as a city, and locate an expert to cut out the stones,” said Marinello.

The heist at the Louvre has already brought up concerns about protective steps at the institution, with a leaked official review expected to be published next month pointing out “significant” and “ongoing” slow progress in updating systems and observing that surveillance were missing in many rooms. But specialists say showing valuable objects in historic buildings with a constant flow of guests comes with risks that are impossible to eliminate completely.

“Older structures are more difficult to protect,” explained an art crime professor. “They often 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 secure windows.”

The most solid protective measures for structures should be conceptualised “like a fortress”, noted Peter Stürmann. “It should include several layers to repel intruders.”

Modern buildings are equipped with state-of-the-art surveillance systems or integrated vibration sensors that alert about a smashed window in real time, but historic institutions may be reluctant to alter their appearance. Laser scanners can be hard to install to decorated surfaces. Motion and sound detectors may also have to be disabled during the daytime as hordes of visitors stomp through a museum.

The schedule of the Louvre raid, which took place between 9.30am and 9.40am local time, was common of modern robberies, Stürmann said. “There’s a good reason why robberies tend to happen at either opening or closing times. It’s often when guards change their shifts and prior to the museum is full of visitors who actually act as extra protection.”

Advances in technology may have introduced new gadgets that can raise the alarm more quickly and efficiently, but it has also provided thieves new methods with which to circumvent protections. In the city, the thieves accessed the museum’s upper level with a mobile equipment and cut through a window with a electric tool.

Elaine Sciolino said the conversation in the country about the 232-year-old structure had primarily centered on visitor management in recent years, and less on protection.

The museum has an on-site brigade of about fifty full-time firefighters, but their mission is mainly to protect the artworks from fires and flooding. “There is no rapid-response unit,” Sciolino said. “In the end, the safety of the Louvre all comes down to government support and money, and at present the nation simply has no money.”