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Breaking into the world’s most-visited museum in the middle of the day, taking eight pieces of priceless Napoleonic jewellery and disappearing into Paris traffic on simple scooters may seem like the most audacious of crimes, carried out for global fame and subsequent movie adaptations.

Experts who study trends in global cultural theft, however, see Sunday morning’s heist at the Louvre as a more practical matter: the most recent in a series of smash-and-grab thefts centered more on the monetary worth of valuable gems or materials than the historical importance, continuing a pattern that has emerged over the last ten years in Europe, Britain and the US. The venue, they propose, would have been of secondary concern to the criminals.

“One might wonder why thieves who want to steal expensive 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 better protected.”

A series of aggressive retail store thefts indicate that many outlets have strengthened their protection in recent years, with security personnel on their locations and merchandise no longer shown overnight. Cultural institutions, meanwhile, look vulnerable, partly because of the inherent factor of being accessible institutions in historic buildings, and partly the financial situation in many western countries.

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

The theft of the items – featuring jewelry pieces made up of precious stones and hundreds of gems, the crown of a historical figure containing thousands of diamonds and a hugely valuable diadem once possessed 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 Mona Lisa from the Louvre, performed by the worker the thief.

Better points of reference may be the recent burglary of jewellery from Dresden’s Green Vault Museum worth over millions, the theft of a multi-million pound gold toilet from a UK landmark the same year, the recent heist of a large gold coin from Berlin’s Bode Museum or even a series of thefts of collector items from US mining museums.

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

If the artefacts were to remain intact, experts say, the thieves would find it hard to sell them. “It's impossible to trade something as immediately identifiable as the museum's gems on the licit market”, commented an art crime researcher of the Association for Research into Crimes against Art.

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

In the past, museums were often reluctant to go public about the disappearance of famous art pieces and would remain quiet out of shame. These days, as cultural robberies are more widely publicised, the keeping and selling of taken items is dangerous for any criminal.

“If you steal a Picasso, it has to remain intact or it becomes worthless, and you have to devise a scheme to conceal it, perhaps by passing it around dangerous individuals,” noted Marinello. “And you’re constantly exposed to the danger of an partner telling the police to cash in a ransom.”

For similar reasons, an art detective 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 media. If you acquire these, if you get caught, you go to jail. You can't display it to your acquaintances, you cannot bequeath it to your family.”

Modifying stolen works by melting down or reshaping does reduce the value. When it comes to gems, it also comes with significant danger because contemporary methods give stones a larger and lighter surface area, and antique-cut stones would either attract notice or reduce value for a concealment.

Crucially, however, melting down or re-cutting eliminates the evidence of the crime. “My guess is that the Louvre thieves will try to bring the stolen goods to locations with gem knowledge like Israel, India or even as nearby as a city, and find someone to cut out the stones,” said Marinello.

The robbery at the Louvre has already brought up concerns about security measures at the museum, with a leaked state auditor report expected to be released soon pointing out “significant” and “ongoing” delays in updating systems and noting that security cameras were missing in multiple areas. But security experts say displaying valuable objects in historic buildings with a constant flow of guests comes with dangers that are not possible to eliminate completely.

“Historic buildings are more difficult to secure,” said an art crime professor. “They often have nice big street-facing windows that makes it easy for criminals to escape, and there may be building protection statutes in place that mean you can’t fit them with secure windows.”

The best security systems for structures should be conceptualised “as a stronghold”, said Peter Stürmann. “There should be several layers to repel attackers.”

Contemporary structures are fitted with advanced surveillance systems or in-built seismic detectors that alert about a smashed window in real time, but historic institutions may be reluctant to uglify their appearance. Laser scanners can be hard to fit to decorated surfaces. Sensors may also have to be turned off during the day as hordes of visitors walk through a museum.

The schedule of the robbery, which took place between 9.30am and 9.40am local time, was common 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 extra protection.”

Advances in technology may have thrown up new gadgets that can raise the alarm more rapidly and efficiently, but it has also given robbers new methods with which to bypass protections. In Paris, the robbers reached the museum’s first-floor window with a vehicle-mounted ladder and breached a glass pane with a battery-powered disc cutter.

Elaine Sciolino said the discussion in France about the historic structure had primarily centered on crowd control in the past decade, and not as much on security.

The institution has an in-house team of about fifty permanent firefighters, but their mission is mainly to safeguard the artworks from blazes and water damage. “There is no rapid-response unit,” Sciolino said. “In the end, the security of the Louvre all depends on government support and funding, and at present the nation lacks sufficient resources.”