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Entering the world’s most-visited art institution 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 international notoriety and subsequent movie adaptations.

Specialists who observe patterns in global cultural theft, 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 monetary worth of precious stones or metals than the historical importance, perpetuating a pattern that has appeared over the last decade in Europe, the UK and the US. The venue, they suggest, would have been of lesser importance to the thieves.

“One might wonder why criminals who want to steal valuable jewellery are entering a globally renowned museum rather than a luxury jewelry store,” stated an expert in art recovery. “The answer is simple: it’s because nowadays a high-end boutique is more secure.”

A spate of violent retail store thefts indicate that many outlets have beefed up their protection in recent years, with security personnel on their locations and merchandise no longer kept on display overnight. Cultural institutions, meanwhile, look vulnerable, partly because of the inherent reason of being accessible institutions in historic buildings, and also the financial situation in many developed nations.

“After the pandemic, governments across the world have reduced spending on law enforcement and the arts funding,” noted Marinello. “With criminals entering the Louvre, it demonstrates how at risk our institutions have become. This is a difficult time to be a museum.”

The robbery of the objects – including necklaces made up of eight sapphires and 631 diamonds, the tiara of a historical figure featuring 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 Mona Lisa from the same museum, performed by the Italian handyman the thief.

Better points of reference may be the 2019 burglary of jewellery from Dresden’s Green Vault Museum worth over millions, the taking of a £4.75m valuable object from a UK landmark the same year, the 2017 heist of a large gold coin from Berlin’s Bode Museum or even a series of robberies of sports memorabilia from US mining museums.

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

If the artefacts were to stay whole, specialists say, the thieves would find it hard to find a buyer. “There’s no way to sell something as immediately identifiable as the museum's gems on the legal marketplace”, said Lynda Albertson of the Association for Research into Crimes against Art.

“They would be immediately recognised, particularly given the cultural authorities has published photos of the items. Even a individual buyer or an sales venue would want to see paperwork confirming proper ownership before touching such remarkable pieces.”

In the previous years, museums were often reluctant to announce publicly about the disappearance of well-known art pieces and would remain quiet out of shame. Now, as cultural robberies are more widely publicised, the storage and selling of stolen art is dangerous for any lawbreaker.

“Taking a famous painting, it has to remain intact or it becomes valueless, and you have to devise a plan to keep it in hiding, maybe by moving it among dangerous individuals,” said Marinello. “There's ongoing risk to the risk of an partner telling the police to collect a ransom.”

For similar reasons, an art detective said it was highly improbable that the theft had been ordered. “Stolen to order is something from films,” he said. “Nobody would touch this. It's global news and in all the media. If you acquire these, 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 worth. When it comes to gems, it also comes with significant danger because modern methods give stones a bigger and brighter appearance, and older-style stones would either attract notice or reduce value for a coverup.

Crucially, however, melting down or re-cutting eliminates the evidence of the theft. “I suspect that the Louvre thieves will try to bring the items to places with diamond expertise like Israel, India or even as close as a city, and find someone to remove the stones,” suggested Marinello.

The robbery at the Louvre has already brought up concerns about protective steps at the museum, with a leaked official review expected to be released next month criticising “significant” and “persistent” slow progress in modernizing systems and observing that security cameras were missing in multiple areas. But security experts say displaying valuable objects in older structures with a steady stream of guests comes with risks that are impossible to remove entirely.

“Older structures are more difficult to secure,” said an art crime professor. “They often have large accessible windows that allows 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 protective measures for buildings should be designed “as a stronghold”, noted Peter Stürmann. “There should be several layers to deter intruders.”

Contemporary structures are fitted with state-of-the-art surveillance systems or integrated seismic detectors that alert about a smashed window in immediately, but historic institutions may be reluctant to uglify their exteriors. Detection devices can be hard to install to stuccoed ceilings. Motion and sound detectors may also have to be turned off during the daytime as hordes of visitors stomp through a museum.

The timing of the Louvre raid, which occurred between 9.30am and 9.40am in Paris, was common of recent thefts, Stürmann said. “It's logical why thefts tend to happen at either start or end of day. Frequently when security rotate and before the museum is full of visitors who effectively act as extra protection.”

Technological progress may have introduced new devices that can notify more quickly and efficiently, but it has also given thieves new methods with which to bypass security measures. In the city, the robbers accessed the museum’s first-floor window with a mobile equipment and breached a glass pane with a electric tool.

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

The museum has an on-site brigade of about 50 permanent emergency personnel, but their mission is mostly to protect the collection from fires and water damage. “There isn't a rapid-response unit,” Sciolino said. “Ultimately, the safety of the Louvre all depends on political will and funding, and currently the nation lacks sufficient money.”