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Breaking into the planet's most popular museum in the middle of the day, taking eight items of invaluable Napoleonic jewellery and disappearing into the city traffic on humble scooters may seem like the most audacious of crimes, executed for global fame and subsequent movie adaptations.

Experts who observe patterns in global cultural theft, however, see the recent heist at the Louvre as a more practical matter: the most recent in a string of smash-and-grab thefts centered more on the monetary worth 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 venue, they suggest, would have been of lesser importance to the thieves.

“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 spate of violent jewellery shop thefts mean that many stores have strengthened their security in recent years, with armed guards on their premises and merchandise no longer shown overnight. Museums, meanwhile, look vulnerable, in part because of the inherent factor of being public-facing institutions in older structures, and also the financial situation in many developed nations.

“Since Covid, authorities across the globe 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 theft of the items – including necklaces made up of precious stones and hundreds of gems, the crown of a historical figure featuring nearly 2,000 diamonds and a extremely expensive diadem once possessed by Napoleon III’s wife that the thieves dropped by the street on their way out – has naturally drawn comparisons with the 1911 theft of the Mona Lisa from the same museum, carried out by the Italian handyman Vincenzo Peruggia.

More relevant comparisons may be the 2019 burglary of valuables from a German institution worth over €113m, the theft of a £4.75m gold toilet from Blenheim Palace the that year, the recent robbery of a large gold coin from a European museum or even a series of thefts of sports memorabilia from American institutions.

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

If the items were to stay whole, specialists say, the thieves would struggle to find a buyer. “There’s no way to trade something as immediately identifiable as the Louvre’s jewels on the licit market”, said an art crime researcher of the a relevant organization.

“They would be immediately recognised, particularly given the cultural authorities has released images of the pieces. Even a individual buyer or an sales venue would want to see documentation establishing proper ownership before touching such remarkable pieces.”

In the previous years, institutions were often reluctant to go public about the loss of well-known works of art and would remain quiet out of embarrassment. Now, as cultural robberies are more reported on, the keeping and sale of taken items is dangerous for any criminal.

“If you steal a famous painting, it has to stay complete or it becomes worthless, and you have to devise a plan to keep it in hiding, maybe by passing it around dangerous individuals,” said Marinello. “And you’re constantly exposed to the risk of an accomplice telling the police to cash in a ransom.”

For comparable factors, an investigator said it was vanishingly unlikely that the robbery had been commissioned. “Stolen to order 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 are apprehended, you go to jail. You cannot show it to your friends, you cannot leave it to your children.”

Modifying taken items by melting down or reshaping does reduce the worth. When it comes to diamonds, it also comes with significant danger because contemporary cutting techniques give stones a bigger and brighter appearance, and antique-cut stones would either attract notice or barter the price down for a coverup.

Crucially, however, melting down or reshaping removes the proof of the theft. “My guess is that the robbers will try to take the items to places with diamond expertise like Israel, another nation or even as nearby as a city, and find someone to remove the gems,” suggested Marinello.

The heist at the Louvre has already raised questions about protective steps at the institution, with a leaked state auditor report expected to be released soon pointing out “significant” and “persistent” slow progress in updating systems and observing that surveillance were lacking in multiple areas. But security experts say displaying precious items in historic buildings with a steady stream of guests comes with dangers that are impossible to eliminate completely.

“Older structures are much harder to secure,” said Erin Thompson. “Many of them have large accessible windows that makes it easy for criminals to get away, and there may be preservation laws in place that mean you are unable to install them with secure windows.”

The best security systems for structures should be conceptualised “as a stronghold”, said a security advisor. “It should include several layers to repel attackers.”

Modern buildings are fitted with advanced external CCTV cameras or integrated seismic detectors that alert about a smashed window in real time, but historic institutions may be reluctant to alter their exteriors. Laser scanners can be hard to fit to stuccoed ceilings. Motion and sound detectors may also have to be turned off during the day as crowds stomp through a museum.

The schedule of the robbery, which took place between 9.30am and 9.40am local time, was typical of modern robberies, Stürmann said. “It's logical why thefts tend to happen at either start or end of day. Frequently when security change their shifts and before the museum is full of visitors who actually act as additional security staff.”

Advances in technology may have introduced new devices that can raise the alarm more quickly and efficiently, but it has also provided thieves new methods with which to bypass security measures. In Paris, the robbers accessed the museum’s first-floor window with a mobile equipment and cut through a glass pane with a battery-powered disc cutter.

An author said the conversation in the country about the historic building had primarily focused on visitor management in the past decade, and not as much on security.

The institution has an in-house team of about 50 permanent firefighters, but their purpose is mostly to safeguard the collection 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 money, and at present the nation lacks sufficient resources.”