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Breaking into the planet's most popular museum in broad daylight, taking eight items of invaluable historical gems and disappearing into the city traffic on humble scooters may seem like the boldest of crimes, carried out for international notoriety and subsequent movie adaptations.

Experts who observe patterns in international art crime, however, see Sunday morning’s heist at the Louvre as something more prosaic: the most recent in a string of smash-and-grab thefts centered more on the monetary worth of valuable gems or metals than the historical importance, perpetuating a pattern that has emerged over the last ten years in Europe, the UK and the US. The venue, they suggest, 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 jewellery shop thefts mean that many stores have beefed up their protection in recent years, with armed guards on their locations and merchandise no longer kept on display overnight. Museums, meanwhile, look vulnerable, partly because of the in-built reason of being public-facing institutions in older structures, and partly the current economic climate in many western countries.

“Since Covid, governments 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 vulnerable our museums have become. This is a difficult time to be a museum.”

The theft of the objects – featuring jewelry pieces made up of precious stones and hundreds of gems, the crown of Empress Eugénie containing 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 been compared with the historical theft of the Mona Lisa 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 taking of a £4.75m valuable object from a UK landmark the same year, the 2017 heist of a valuable item from Berlin’s Bode Museum or even a spate of robberies of sports memorabilia 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 thieves would struggle to sell them. “There’s no way to sell something as recognizable as the museum's gems on the legal marketplace”, commented an art crime researcher of the a relevant organization.

“They would be immediately recognised, particularly given the Ministry of Culture has released images of the items. Even a individual buyer or an auction house would want to see documentation establishing proper ownership before handling such remarkable pieces.”

In the past, institutions were often hesitant to announce publicly about the disappearance of famous art pieces and would remain quiet out of embarrassment. Now, as art thefts are more reported on, the storage and selling of taken items is risky business for any criminal.

“Taking a famous painting, it has to remain intact or it becomes worthless, and you have to devise a plan to keep it in hiding, maybe by moving it among difficult criminal actors,” noted Marinello. “And you’re constantly exposed to the danger of an accomplice informing authorities to cash in a reward.”

For comparable factors, an art detective said it was highly improbable that the theft had been ordered. “Stolen to order is something from films,” he said. “No one would handle these items. It’s all around the world and in all the media. If you buy this, if you get caught, you end up in prison. You can't display it to your acquaintances, you cannot leave it to your family.”

Modifying taken items by melting down or re-cutting does reduce the worth. When it comes to gems, it also comes with considerable risk because modern cutting techniques give stones a larger and lighter appearance, and older-style stones would either attract notice or barter the price down for a coverup.

Importantly, however, dismantling or re-cutting removes the proof of the crime. “My guess is that the robbers will try to bring the items to locations with diamond expertise like Israel, another nation or even as close as a city, and locate an expert to cut out the stones,” suggested Marinello.

The heist at the Louvre has already brought up concerns about security measures at the museum, with a unauthorized official review expected to be released next month pointing out “considerable” and “persistent” slow progress in modernizing systems and observing that security cameras were missing in many rooms. But security experts say displaying valuable objects in historic buildings with a constant flow of visitors comes with dangers that are impossible to remove entirely.

“Older structures are much harder to protect,” explained Erin Thompson. “They often have nice big street-facing windows that allows for thieves to get away, and there may be preservation laws in place that mean you can’t fit them with secure windows.”

The most solid protective measures for structures should be conceptualised “like a fortress”, said Peter Stürmann. “There should be several layers to repel attackers.”

Modern buildings are fitted with state-of-the-art surveillance systems or integrated vibration sensors that raise alarm about a broken glass in real time, but old museums may be reluctant to uglify their exteriors. Detection devices can be difficult to fit to decorated surfaces. Motion and sound detectors may also have to be disabled during the day as crowds stomp through a museum.

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

Advances in technology may have introduced new gadgets that can notify more quickly and efficiently, but it has also given robbers new methods 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 discussion in France about the 232-year-old structure had mostly focused 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 mission is mainly to protect the collection from blazes and water damage. “There isn't a quick reaction team,” Sciolino said. “In the end, the safety of the Louvre all depends on political will and money, and currently the nation simply has no money.”