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Entering the planet's most popular 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, executed for international notoriety and ensuing Hollywood film treatments.

Specialists who study trends in international art crime, however, see Sunday morning’s heist 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 artifacts’ significance, continuing a pattern that has emerged 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.

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

A series of aggressive retail store thefts indicate that many outlets have beefed up their protection in the past few years, with security personnel on their locations and wares no longer shown overnight. Museums, on the other hand, look more exposed, in part because of the in-built reason of being accessible institutions in historic buildings, and also the financial situation in many developed nations.

“Since Covid, authorities across the globe have reduced spending on police and the culture sector,” said Marinello. “If thieves can get into the Louvre, it demonstrates how vulnerable our museums have become. This is a difficult time to be a museum.”

The theft of the items – including necklaces made up of eight sapphires and hundreds of gems, the tiara of a historical figure containing nearly 2,000 diamonds and a hugely valuable crown once owned by Napoleon III’s wife that the thieves left by the roadside on their way out – has naturally been compared with the 1911 theft of the famous painting from the same museum, carried out by the worker Vincenzo Peruggia.

Better comparisons may be the 2019 burglary of jewellery from a German institution worth over €113m, the theft of a multi-million pound valuable object from Blenheim Palace the that year, the 2017 heist of a valuable item from a European museum or even a series of robberies of sports memorabilia from US mining museums.

“It's a clear trend here,” said Marinello. “Smash, grab, and melt it down as quickly as possible.”

If the items were to stay whole, experts 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”, commented Lynda Albertson of the Association for Research into Crimes against Art.

“They are too well-known, particularly given the Ministry of Culture has released images of the pieces. Even a private collector or an sales venue would want to see paperwork establishing proper ownership before handling such remarkable pieces.”

In the previous years, institutions were often hesitant to announce publicly about the loss of famous works of art and would stay silent out of embarrassment. Now, as cultural robberies are more reported on, the storage and selling of taken items is risky business for any criminal.

“If you steal a famous painting, it has to stay complete or it becomes worthless, and you have to conceive of a scheme to conceal it, maybe by moving it among difficult criminal actors,” said Marinello. “There's ongoing risk to the risk of an partner informing authorities to collect a reward.”

For similar reasons, an investigator said it was highly improbable that the robbery 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 go to jail. You cannot show it to your friends, you cannot bequeath it to your family.”

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

Crucially, however, dismantling or re-cutting removes the proof of the theft. “I suspect that the robbers will try to take the stolen goods to places with diamond expertise like Israel, India or even as nearby as a city, and locate an expert to cut out the stones,” suggested Marinello.

The heist at the Louvre has already raised questions about protective steps at the museum, with a unauthorized official review expected to be published soon criticising “significant” and “ongoing” slow progress in modernizing systems and observing that surveillance were lacking in multiple areas. But specialists say showing valuable objects in historic buildings with a steady stream of guests comes with risks that are impossible to eliminate completely.

“Older structures are more difficult to secure,” said Erin Thompson. “Many of them have large accessible windows that makes it easy 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 designed “as a stronghold”, noted Peter Stürmann. “It should include multiple levels to repel intruders.”

Contemporary structures are fitted with advanced external CCTV cameras or in-built vibration sensors that alert about a broken glass in immediately, but historic institutions may be reluctant to alter their appearance. Laser scanners 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 walk through a museum.

The timing of the Louvre raid, which took place between 9.30am and 9.40am in Paris, was typical of modern robberies, Stürmann said. “It's logical why thefts tend to happen at either opening or closing times. It’s often when security rotate and prior to the museum is full of visitors who effectively 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 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 electric tool.

An author said the conversation in France about the 232-year-old structure had primarily centered on visitor management in the past decade, and not as much on security.

The institution has an on-site team of about 50 full-time firefighters, but their mission is mainly to protect the collection from blazes and water damage. “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 currently the nation lacks sufficient money.”