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Breaking into the planet's most popular museum in the middle of the day, grabbing eight pieces of priceless historical gems and disappearing into the city traffic on simple scooters may seem like the boldest of crimes, executed for global fame and ensuing Hollywood film treatments.

Experts who observe trends in global cultural theft, however, see Sunday morning’s robbery at the Louvre as something more prosaic: the latest in a series of quick-hit thefts centered more on the material value of valuable gems or materials than the artifacts’ significance, continuing a trend that has emerged over the last ten years in Germany, the UK and the US. The venue, they suggest, would have been of lesser importance to the criminals.

“You may ask why thieves who want to take expensive jewellery are entering a world-famous museum rather than a luxury jewelry store,” said an expert in art recovery. “The answer is simple: it’s because these days a high-end boutique is more secure.”

A spate of violent retail store thefts indicate that many stores have beefed up their security in the past few years, with armed guards on their locations and merchandise no longer shown overnight. Cultural institutions, on the other hand, look vulnerable, in part because of the inherent factor of being accessible institutions in historic buildings, and partly the current economic climate in many western countries.

“Since Covid, governments across the globe have reduced spending on police and the culture sector,” 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 robbery of the items – featuring jewelry pieces made up of eight sapphires and hundreds of gems, the tiara of a historical figure featuring thousands of diamonds and a hugely valuable diadem once possessed by a royal that the thieves dropped 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 recent burglary of jewellery from Dresden’s Green Vault Museum worth over €113m, the theft of a multi-million pound gold toilet from a UK landmark the that year, the 2017 robbery of a large gold coin from a European museum or even a series of thefts of collector items from US mining museums.

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

If the items were to remain intact, experts say, the criminals would find it hard to sell them. “It's impossible 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 would be immediately recognised, particularly given the Ministry of Culture has released images of the items. Even a private collector or an auction house would want to see paperwork establishing legal possession before handling such striking pieces.”

In the previous years, museums were often hesitant to announce publicly about the disappearance of famous art pieces and would stay silent out of embarrassment. These days, as art thefts are more widely publicised, the storage and sale of stolen art is risky business for any lawbreaker.

“Taking a famous painting, it has to remain intact or it becomes worthless, and you have to conceive of a plan to keep it in hiding, maybe by moving it among dangerous individuals,” noted Marinello. “There's ongoing risk to the danger of an accomplice informing authorities to collect a reward.”

For similar reasons, an art detective said it was vanishingly unlikely 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 newspapers. If you buy this, if you get caught, you go to jail. You cannot show it to your acquaintances, you cannot leave it to your family.”

Modifying stolen works by melting down or re-cutting does lower the value. When it comes to gems, it also comes with significant danger because modern cutting techniques give stones a bigger and lighter appearance, and older-style stones would either attract notice or barter the price down for a coverup.

Crucially, however, dismantling or re-cutting removes the evidence of the theft. “I suspect that the Louvre thieves will try to bring the items to locations with diamond expertise like Israel, another nation or even as nearby as Antwerp, and find someone to remove the gems,” suggested Marinello.

The robbery at the Louvre has already raised questions about protective steps at the institution, with a leaked state auditor report expected to be published soon pointing out “significant” and “persistent” delays in updating equipment and noting that surveillance were lacking in multiple areas. But security experts say displaying valuable objects in older structures with a constant flow of guests comes with risks that are not possible to eliminate completely.

“Historic buildings are much harder to protect,” explained Erin Thompson. “They often have nice big street-facing windows that makes it easy for criminals 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 buildings should be conceptualised “as a stronghold”, noted Peter Stürmann. “It should include multiple levels to repel intruders.”

Contemporary structures are equipped with advanced external CCTV cameras or integrated vibration sensors that alert about a broken glass in immediately, but historic institutions may be hesitant to alter their appearance. Laser scanners can be hard to install to decorated surfaces. Sensors may also have to be turned off during the day as hordes of visitors walk through a museum.

The timing of the Louvre raid, which occurred between morning hours local time, was typical 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 change their shifts and prior to the museum is crowded who actually act as additional security staff.”

Advances in technology may have thrown up new devices that can raise the alarm more rapidly and effectively, but it has also provided thieves new tools with which to circumvent security measures. In the city, the robbers accessed the museum’s first-floor window with a vehicle-mounted ladder and cut through a window with a electric tool.

Elaine Sciolino said the discussion in the country about the historic building had primarily centered on visitor management in the past decade, and not as much on security.

The museum has an in-house team of about 50 permanent emergency personnel, but their purpose is mostly to protect the artworks from blazes and flooding. “There is no quick reaction team,” Sciolino said. “In the end, the security of the Louvre all comes down to government support and money, and at present the nation lacks sufficient resources.”