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Breaking into the planet's most popular art institution in the middle of the day, taking eight pieces of priceless historical gems and disappearing into the city traffic on simple scooters may seem like the most audacious of crimes, executed for global fame and ensuing movie adaptations.

Specialists who observe trends in international art crime, however, see Sunday morning’s robbery at the Louvre as something more prosaic: the latest in a series of smash-and-grab thefts focused more on the monetary worth of valuable gems or metals than the artifacts’ significance, perpetuating a pattern that has appeared over the last decade in Europe, the UK and the US. The location, they propose, would have been of lesser importance to the thieves.

“One might wonder why criminals who want to take valuable jewellery are breaking into a world-famous museum rather than a luxury jewelry store,” said Christopher A Marinello. “The answer is simple: it’s because nowadays a high-end boutique is more secure.”

A spate of violent jewellery shop thefts mean that many stores have beefed up their security in recent years, with armed guards on their locations and wares no longer shown overnight. Cultural institutions, meanwhile, look more exposed, partly because of the inherent factor of being public-facing institutions in historic buildings, and partly the financial situation in many developed nations.

“Since Covid, governments across the world have reduced spending on police and the arts funding,” said Marinello. “If thieves can get into the Louvre, it demonstrates how vulnerable our museums have become. This is a horrible time to be a museum.”

The robbery of the objects – featuring jewelry pieces made up of precious stones and hundreds of gems, the tiara of Empress Eugénie featuring thousands of diamonds and a extremely expensive diadem once possessed by Napoleon III’s wife that the thieves left by the roadside on their way out – has naturally drawn comparisons with the 1911 theft of the famous painting from the same museum, performed by the Italian handyman the thief.

Better comparisons may be the 2019 burglary of valuables from Dresden’s Green Vault Museum worth over €113m, the theft of a multi-million pound valuable object from a UK landmark the same year, the 2017 heist of a large gold coin from Berlin’s Bode Museum or even a spate of thefts of sports memorabilia from US mining museums.

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

If the artefacts were to remain intact, experts say, the criminals would struggle to sell them. “It's impossible to sell 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 would be immediately recognised, especially given the cultural authorities has published photos of the items. Even a individual buyer or an auction house would want to see paperwork establishing proper ownership before touching such striking pieces.”

In the previous years, institutions were often hesitant to go public about the loss of famous art pieces and would stay silent out of shame. These days, as cultural robberies are more reported on, the storage and selling of taken items is dangerous for any criminal.

“If you steal a Picasso, it has to stay complete or it becomes valueless, and you have to devise a plan to keep it in hiding, perhaps by passing it around difficult criminal actors,” said Marinello. “There's ongoing risk to the danger of an partner telling the police to collect a reward.”

For similar reasons, an investigator said it was highly improbable that the robbery had been ordered. “Commissioned theft is something from Hollywood movies,” he said. “No one would handle these items. It's global news and in all the media. If you acquire these, if you are apprehended, you end up in prison. You can't display it to your acquaintances, you cannot bequeath it to your children.”

Modifying taken items by melting down or reshaping does reduce the value. When it comes to gems, it also comes with significant danger because modern methods give gems a larger and lighter surface area, and antique-cut stones would either draw unwanted attention or reduce value for a concealment.

Importantly, however, melting down or re-cutting removes the proof of the theft. “I suspect that the Louvre thieves will try to take the items to places with diamond expertise like a country, another nation or even as close as a city, and find someone to cut out the stones,” suggested Marinello.

The robbery at the Louvre has already raised questions about security measures at the institution, with a unauthorized state auditor report expected to be published soon pointing out “considerable” and “ongoing” delays in updating systems and noting that surveillance were lacking in many rooms. But security experts say showing precious items in historic buildings with a steady stream of visitors comes with risks that are impossible to eliminate completely.

“Historic buildings are more difficult to protect,” explained an art crime professor. “Many of them have large accessible windows that makes it easy for criminals to get away, and there may be building protection statutes in place that mean you can’t fit them with proper bulletproof glass.”

The best protective measures for structures should be conceptualised “like a fortress”, said Peter Stürmann. “It should include several layers to deter attackers.”

Contemporary structures are fitted with state-of-the-art external CCTV cameras or integrated seismic detectors that alert about a broken glass in real time, but old museums may be hesitant to alter their appearance. Detection devices can be difficult to fit to decorated surfaces. Motion and sound detectors may also have to be turned off during the daytime as crowds stomp through a museum.

The timing 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 rotate and prior to the museum is full of visitors who actually act as extra protection.”

Technological progress may have introduced new gadgets that can raise the alarm more rapidly and effectively, but it has also provided thieves new methods with which to bypass protections. In Paris, the thieves reached the museum’s upper level with a vehicle-mounted ladder and breached a glass pane with a battery-powered disc cutter.

An author said the conversation in the country about the 232-year-old structure had mostly focused on visitor management in the past decade, and less on security.

The museum has an on-site team of about 50 full-time emergency personnel, but their mission is mostly to protect the artworks from fires and water damage. “There isn't a rapid-response unit,” Sciolino said. “In the end, the security of the Louvre all comes down to political will and money, and at present France lacks sufficient money.”