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Breaking into the world’s most-visited art institution in the middle of the day, grabbing eight pieces of priceless Napoleonic jewellery and vanishing into the city traffic on humble scooters may seem like the boldest of crimes, executed for global fame and subsequent Hollywood film treatments.

Specialists who study trends in international art crime, however, see the recent robbery at the Louvre as a more practical matter: the latest in a series of smash-and-grab 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 Europe, Britain and the US. The venue, they propose, would have been of lesser importance to the criminals.

“You may ask why criminals who want to steal expensive jewellery are breaking into a globally renowned museum rather than a Cartier store,” said Christopher A Marinello. “The answer is simple: it’s because nowadays a high-end boutique is better protected.”

A series of aggressive jewellery shop thefts indicate that many stores have beefed up their protection in recent years, with security personnel on their premises and merchandise no longer shown overnight. Museums, meanwhile, look more exposed, in part because of the in-built reason of being public-facing institutions in historic buildings, and also the current economic climate in many developed nations.

“Since Covid, authorities across the world have reduced spending on law enforcement and the arts funding,” said Marinello. “If thieves can get into 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 eight sapphires and 631 diamonds, the crown of a historical figure featuring thousands of diamonds and a hugely valuable crown once possessed by a royal that the robbers left by the roadside on their way out – has inevitably been compared with the historical theft of the famous painting from the Louvre, performed by the Italian handyman the thief.

Better points of reference may be the 2019 burglary of valuables from a German institution worth over €113m, the taking of a multi-million pound gold toilet from Blenheim Palace the that year, the recent heist of a large gold coin from Berlin’s Bode Museum or even a spate of thefts of collector items 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 items were to stay whole, experts say, the criminals would struggle to find a buyer. “It's impossible to trade something as immediately identifiable as the Louvre’s jewels on the legal marketplace”, said Lynda Albertson of the a relevant organization.

“They are too well-known, particularly given the cultural authorities has published photos of the pieces. Even a individual buyer or an sales venue would want to see paperwork confirming legal possession before touching such striking pieces.”

In the past, institutions were often hesitant to go public about the loss of famous art pieces and would remain quiet out of shame. These days, as cultural robberies are more widely publicised, the keeping and sale of taken items is risky business for any lawbreaker.

“Taking a famous painting, it has to remain intact or it becomes valueless, and you have to conceive of a scheme to keep it in hiding, maybe by passing it around difficult criminal actors,” said Marinello. “And you’re constantly exposed to the danger of an accomplice telling the police to collect a ransom.”

For comparable factors, an art detective said it was highly improbable that the theft had been commissioned. “Commissioned theft is something from films,” he said. “Nobody would touch this. It's global news and in all the media. If you buy this, if you are apprehended, you end up in prison. You cannot show it to your friends, you cannot leave it to your children.”

Modifying taken items by dismantling or reshaping does lower the value. When it comes to diamonds, it also comes with considerable risk because contemporary methods give stones a bigger and lighter surface area, and antique-cut stones would either attract notice or barter the price down for a concealment.

Importantly, however, melting down or reshaping eliminates the evidence of the crime. “My guess is that the Louvre thieves will try to bring the stolen goods to locations with diamond expertise like Israel, India or even as nearby as Antwerp, and find someone to remove the stones,” said Marinello.

The robbery at the Louvre has already brought up concerns about security measures at the institution, with a unauthorized state auditor report expected to be released soon pointing out “significant” and “persistent” slow progress in modernizing systems and noting that surveillance were lacking in many rooms. But security experts say showing valuable objects in older structures with a steady stream of guests comes with risks that are impossible to eliminate completely.

“Historic buildings are much harder to protect,” explained an art crime professor. “They often have large accessible windows that allows for criminals to escape, and there may be building protection statutes in place that mean you can’t fit them with proper bulletproof glass.”

The most solid security systems for buildings should be designed “like a fortress”, said Peter Stürmann. “It should include several layers to deter intruders.”

Modern buildings are fitted with advanced surveillance systems or integrated seismic detectors that raise alarm about a smashed window in real time, but old museums may be reluctant to alter their exteriors. Detection devices can be difficult to fit to decorated surfaces. Sensors may also have to be turned off during the day as crowds walk through a museum.

The schedule of the Louvre raid, which took place between morning hours local time, was typical of recent thefts, Stürmann said. “It's logical why robberies tend to happen at either start or end of day. It’s often when security rotate and prior to the museum is full of visitors who effectively act as extra protection.”

Advances in technology may have thrown up new gadgets that can raise the alarm more quickly and effectively, but it has also provided robbers new tools with which to bypass protections. In the city, the thieves accessed the museum’s upper level with a vehicle-mounted ladder and breached a glass pane with a electric tool.

Elaine Sciolino said the discussion in the country about the 232-year-old building had primarily centered on crowd control in the past decade, and not as much on protection.

The institution has an in-house team of about 50 permanent firefighters, but their mission is mainly to protect the artworks from blazes and flooding. “There isn't a rapid-response unit,” Sciolino said. “Ultimately, the safety of the Louvre all depends on government support and money, and at present France simply has no money.”