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Entering the planet's most popular museum in the middle of the day, grabbing eight items of invaluable historical gems and vanishing into Paris traffic on simple scooters may seem like the most audacious of crimes, executed for global fame and subsequent movie adaptations.

Specialists who study patterns in global cultural theft, however, see the recent robbery at the Louvre as a more practical matter: the most recent in a series of quick-hit thefts centered more on the material value of precious stones 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 suggest, would have been of secondary concern to the criminals.

“One might wonder why criminals who want to take expensive jewellery are entering 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 series of violent jewellery shop thefts indicate that many stores have beefed up their protection in the past few years, with security personnel on their locations and merchandise no longer shown overnight. Cultural institutions, on the other hand, look more exposed, in part because of the in-built reason of being public-facing institutions in historic buildings, and also the financial situation in many developed nations.

“Since Covid, authorities across the globe have cut back on police and the arts funding,” noted Marinello. “With criminals entering the Louvre, it shows how at risk our institutions have become. This is a difficult time to be a museum.”

The robbery of the items – including necklaces made up of precious stones and 631 diamonds, the tiara of a historical figure featuring thousands of diamonds and a extremely expensive diadem once possessed by a royal that the thieves dropped by the roadside on their way out – has inevitably drawn comparisons with the historical theft of the famous painting from the Louvre, performed by the worker the thief.

Better points of reference may be the 2019 burglary of jewellery from Dresden’s Green Vault Museum worth over millions, the taking of a £4.75m gold toilet from a UK landmark the that year, the recent 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 artefacts were to remain intact, specialists say, the thieves would find it hard to sell them. “It's impossible to sell something as immediately identifiable as the museum's gems on the licit market”, said Lynda Albertson of the Association for Research into Crimes against Art.

“They are too well-known, especially given the Ministry of Culture has released images of the items. Even a individual buyer or an auction house would want to see paperwork confirming proper ownership before handling such remarkable pieces.”

In the previous years, institutions were often reluctant to announce publicly about the loss of well-known works of art and would stay silent out of embarrassment. These days, as art thefts are more widely publicised, the storage and sale of stolen art is dangerous for any lawbreaker.

“If you steal a famous painting, it has to stay complete or it becomes worthless, and you have to devise a plan to keep it in hiding, perhaps by passing it around difficult criminal actors,” noted Marinello. “And you’re constantly exposed to the risk of an accomplice telling the police to cash in a reward.”

For comparable factors, an investigator said it was highly improbable that the robbery had been ordered. “Commissioned theft is something from Hollywood movies,” he said. “Nobody would touch this. It’s all around the world 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 bequeath it to your family.”

Altering taken items by melting down or re-cutting does lower the worth. When it comes to diamonds, it also comes with significant danger because modern methods give stones a bigger and brighter appearance, and antique-cut stones would either attract notice or reduce value for a concealment.

Crucially, however, melting down or re-cutting removes the evidence of the crime. “I suspect that the robbers will try to bring the items to locations with diamond expertise like Israel, India or even as close as Antwerp, and locate an expert to cut out the gems,” said Marinello.

The robbery at the Louvre has already raised questions about security measures at the institution, with a leaked official review expected to be published soon pointing out “considerable” and “persistent” slow progress in updating equipment and noting that surveillance were lacking in many rooms. But specialists say showing precious items in older structures with a steady stream of visitors comes with risks that are impossible to remove entirely.

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

The most solid protective measures for buildings should be designed “like a fortress”, said a security advisor. “It should include multiple levels to repel intruders.”

Contemporary structures are fitted with state-of-the-art surveillance systems or in-built vibration sensors that alert about a broken glass in real time, but old museums may be reluctant to uglify their appearance. Detection devices can be hard 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 Louvre raid, which occurred between 9.30am and 9.40am local time, was typical of recent thefts, Stürmann said. “It's logical why thefts tend to happen at either opening or closing times. Frequently when guards change their shifts and prior to the museum is full of visitors who actually act as additional security staff.”

Advances in technology may have thrown up new devices that can notify more rapidly and efficiently, but it has also given thieves new tools with which to bypass security measures. In Paris, the robbers reached the museum’s first-floor window with a mobile equipment and breached a window with a battery-powered disc cutter.

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

The institution has an on-site team of about 50 full-time emergency personnel, but their mission is mostly to safeguard the collection from blazes and water damage. “There is no quick reaction team,” Sciolino said. “Ultimately, the security of the Louvre all comes down to political will and money, and currently the nation lacks sufficient resources.”