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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 Paris traffic on simple scooters may seem like the most audacious of crimes, executed for international notoriety and subsequent movie adaptations.

Experts who observe trends in international art crime, however, see Sunday morning’s heist at the Louvre as a more practical matter: the most recent in a string of smash-and-grab thefts focused more on the monetary worth of valuable gems or materials than the artifacts’ significance, perpetuating a trend that has appeared over the last decade in Germany, the UK and the US. The venue, they propose, would have been of secondary concern to the criminals.

“You may ask why thieves who want to take valuable jewellery are entering a globally renowned museum rather than a Cartier store,” stated Christopher A Marinello. “The answer is simple: it’s because these days a Cartier store is more secure.”

A spate of violent retail store thefts mean that many stores have beefed up their security in the past few years, with security personnel on their premises and wares no longer kept on display overnight. Museums, meanwhile, look vulnerable, partly because of the inherent factor of being accessible institutions in older structures, and also the current economic climate in many western countries.

“Since Covid, authorities across the globe have reduced spending on police and the arts funding,” said Marinello. “With criminals entering the Louvre, it shows how vulnerable our museums have become. This is a difficult time to be a museum.”

The robbery of the objects – including jewelry pieces made up of precious stones and hundreds of gems, the crown of Empress Eugénie containing thousands of diamonds and a hugely valuable crown once owned by Napoleon III’s wife that the thieves left by the street on their way out – has naturally drawn comparisons with the 1911 theft of the Mona Lisa from the Louvre, carried out by the worker the thief.

Better points of reference may be the recent theft of valuables from a German institution 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 a European museum or even a series of robberies of sports memorabilia from American institutions.

“There’s a simple pattern here,” said Marinello. “Smash, grab, and melt it down as rapidly as possible.”

If the artefacts were to remain intact, experts say, the thieves would find it hard to find a buyer. “There’s no way to trade 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, especially given the cultural authorities has released images of the items. Even a individual buyer or an sales venue would want to see paperwork establishing legal possession before handling such striking pieces.”

In the past, museums were often reluctant to announce publicly about the loss of well-known art pieces and would remain quiet out of embarrassment. Now, as cultural robberies are more widely publicised, the keeping and selling of taken items is risky business for any lawbreaker.

“Taking a famous painting, it has to stay complete or it becomes valueless, and you have to devise a plan to conceal it, perhaps by passing it around difficult criminal actors,” noted Marinello. “There's ongoing risk to the danger of an partner telling the police to collect a reward.”

For comparable factors, an investigator said it was vanishingly unlikely that the robbery had been commissioned. “Commissioned theft is something from Hollywood movies,” he said. “Nobody would touch this. It's global news and in all the newspapers. If you acquire these, if you are apprehended, you go to jail. You can't display it to your friends, you cannot leave it to your family.”

Modifying stolen works by melting down or reshaping does lower the worth. When it comes to gems, it also comes with significant danger because contemporary cutting techniques give stones a bigger and lighter appearance, and antique-cut stones would either attract notice or reduce value for a concealment.

Crucially, however, dismantling or reshaping eliminates the evidence of the theft. “My guess is that the robbers will try to bring the items to locations with diamond expertise like Israel, India or even as close as Antwerp, and find someone to remove the stones,” suggested Marinello.

The heist at the Louvre has already brought up concerns about protective steps at the institution, with a unauthorized state auditor report expected to be published soon criticising “significant” and “persistent” delays in updating equipment and observing that security cameras were lacking in multiple areas. But specialists say showing precious items in older structures with a constant flow of guests comes with risks that are impossible to eliminate completely.

“Older structures are more difficult to protect,” said Erin Thompson. “Many of them have large accessible windows that allows for criminals to escape, and there may be building protection statutes in place that mean you are unable to install them with secure windows.”

The most solid protective measures for buildings should be conceptualised “like a fortress”, noted a security advisor. “There should be several layers to deter intruders.”

Contemporary structures are fitted with advanced surveillance systems or in-built seismic detectors that alert about a broken glass in real time, but old museums may be hesitant 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 stomp through a museum.

The timing of the robbery, which occurred between 9.30am and 9.40am local time, was common of modern robberies, Stürmann said. “There’s a good reason why robberies tend to happen at either start or end of day. Frequently when guards rotate and before the museum is crowded who effectively act as additional security staff.”

Technological progress may have introduced new devices that can raise the alarm more quickly and effectively, but it has also provided thieves new tools with which to bypass protections. In Paris, the robbers reached the museum’s upper level with a mobile equipment and breached a window with a battery-powered disc cutter.

Elaine Sciolino said the conversation in the country about the historic building had mostly centered on crowd control 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 mainly to safeguard the collection from blazes and flooding. “There is no quick reaction team,” Sciolino said. “Ultimately, the security of the Louvre all depends on political will and funding, and currently France simply has no resources.”