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Breaking into the world’s most-visited museum in broad daylight, taking eight pieces of priceless historical gems and vanishing into Paris traffic on simple scooters may seem like the most audacious of crimes, executed for global fame and ensuing Hollywood film treatments.

Specialists who observe patterns in international art crime, however, see the recent heist at the Louvre as something more prosaic: the latest in a string of quick-hit thefts centered more on the monetary worth of valuable gems or metals than the historical importance, continuing a trend that has appeared over the last ten years in Germany, the UK and the US. The venue, they suggest, 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. “It's straightforward: it’s because these days a high-end boutique is more secure.”

A spate of aggressive jewellery shop thefts indicate that many stores have strengthened their security in recent years, with security personnel on their locations and wares no longer shown overnight. Cultural institutions, on the other hand, look more exposed, in part because of the inherent factor of being public-facing institutions in historic buildings, and partly the current economic climate in many western countries.

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

The theft of the items – featuring jewelry pieces made up of eight sapphires and hundreds of gems, the crown of Empress Eugénie featuring nearly 2,000 diamonds and a hugely valuable diadem once possessed by Napoleon III’s wife that the robbers left by the roadside on their way out – has naturally been compared with the historical theft of the Mona Lisa from the same museum, performed by the Italian handyman Vincenzo Peruggia.

More relevant comparisons may be the 2019 theft of jewellery from a German institution worth over millions, the taking of a £4.75m valuable object from a UK landmark the that year, the 2017 heist of a valuable item from Berlin’s Bode Museum or even a series of robberies of collector items from US mining museums.

“It's a clear trend here,” explained Marinello. “Break in, take items, and dismantle them as rapidly as possible.”

If the artefacts were to stay whole, specialists say, the criminals would find it hard to sell them. “It's impossible to sell something as recognizable as the museum's gems on the legal marketplace”, commented Lynda Albertson of the a relevant organization.

“They are too well-known, particularly given the cultural authorities has released images of the items. Even a individual buyer or an sales venue would want to see documentation establishing legal possession before handling such striking pieces.”

In the past, museums were often reluctant to announce publicly about the disappearance of famous works of art and would stay silent out of shame. These days, as cultural robberies are more widely publicised, the keeping and selling of taken items is dangerous for any lawbreaker.

“Taking a famous painting, it has to stay complete or it becomes valueless, and you have to devise a scheme to conceal it, perhaps by passing it around dangerous individuals,” noted Marinello. “There's ongoing risk to the risk of an partner telling the police to collect a reward.”

For comparable factors, an art detective said it was vanishingly unlikely that the theft had been commissioned. “Stolen to order is something from films,” he said. “No one would handle these items. It's global news and in all the newspapers. If you acquire these, if you are apprehended, you go to jail. You can't display it to your friends, you cannot bequeath it to your family.”

Modifying stolen works by dismantling or re-cutting does lower the value. When it comes to diamonds, it also comes with considerable risk because contemporary cutting techniques give gems a larger and brighter 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. “I suspect that the Louvre thieves will try to bring the stolen goods to locations with diamond expertise like a country, India or even as nearby as a city, and find someone to cut out the stones,” said Marinello.

The heist at the Louvre has already raised questions about security measures at the museum, with a unauthorized official review expected to be released next month criticising “significant” and “ongoing” delays in updating systems and noting that security cameras were missing in multiple areas. But security experts say showing valuable objects in historic buildings with a steady stream of guests comes with dangers that are impossible to eliminate completely.

“Older structures are more difficult to protect,” said Erin Thompson. “Many of them have large accessible windows that makes it easy for criminals to get away, and there may be building protection statutes in place that mean you are unable to install them with proper bulletproof glass.”

The most solid security systems for structures should be conceptualised “like a fortress”, said Peter Stürmann. “There should be multiple levels to repel intruders.”

Modern buildings are fitted with state-of-the-art surveillance systems or in-built vibration sensors that alert about a smashed window in immediately, but historic institutions may be hesitant to uglify their appearance. Detection devices can be difficult to fit to decorated surfaces. Sensors may also have to be disabled during the daytime as crowds stomp through a museum.

The schedule of the robbery, which occurred between morning hours in Paris, was common of modern robberies, Stürmann said. “There’s a good reason why thefts tend to happen at either opening or closing times. Frequently when guards change their shifts and prior to the museum is crowded who actually act as additional security staff.”

Technological progress may have thrown up new devices that can notify more quickly and effectively, but it has also given robbers new tools with which to bypass security measures. In the city, the robbers reached the museum’s first-floor window with a vehicle-mounted ladder and breached a window with a battery-powered disc cutter.

An author said the conversation in the country about the 232-year-old structure had mostly centered on crowd control in the past decade, and not as much on protection.

The institution has an on-site brigade of about 50 permanent emergency personnel, but their mission is mostly to protect the artworks from blazes and flooding. “There isn't a rapid-response unit,” Sciolino said. “Ultimately, the security of the Louvre all depends on political will and money, and currently the nation simply has no resources.”