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Breaking into the world’s most-visited art institution in broad daylight, grabbing eight pieces of priceless Napoleonic jewellery and disappearing into the city traffic on humble scooters may seem like the boldest of crimes, carried out for international notoriety and subsequent Hollywood film treatments.

Specialists who study trends in international art crime, however, see Sunday morning’s heist at the Louvre as something more prosaic: the most recent in a string of quick-hit thefts centered more on the material value of valuable gems or materials than the historical importance, continuing a pattern that has emerged over the last ten years in Germany, the UK and the US. The venue, they propose, would have been of secondary concern to the thieves.

“One might wonder why criminals who want to take expensive jewellery are breaking into a world-famous museum rather than a Cartier 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 mean that many outlets have beefed up their protection in the past few years, with security personnel on their locations and wares no longer shown overnight. Cultural institutions, meanwhile, look more exposed, in part because of the in-built reason of being public-facing institutions in older structures, and also the financial situation in many western countries.

“Since Covid, governments across the globe have cut back on police and the arts funding,” said Marinello. “If thieves can get into the Louvre, it shows how vulnerable our museums have become. This is a difficult time to be a museum.”

The robbery of the objects – featuring necklaces made up of precious stones and 631 diamonds, the crown of a historical figure containing nearly 2,000 diamonds and a extremely expensive crown once possessed by Napoleon III’s wife that the robbers dropped by the street on their way out – has inevitably 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 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 series of robberies of collector items 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 artefacts were to stay whole, experts say, the criminals would struggle to find a buyer. “It's impossible to sell something as recognizable as the Louvre’s jewels on the licit market”, commented Lynda Albertson of the a relevant organization.

“They are too well-known, especially given the cultural authorities has published photos of the items. Even a private collector or an auction house would want to see documentation establishing proper ownership before handling such striking pieces.”

In the previous years, museums were often reluctant to go public about the disappearance of well-known works of art and would remain quiet out of embarrassment. Now, as art thefts are more reported on, the keeping and selling of stolen art is risky business for any lawbreaker.

“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 moving it among dangerous individuals,” noted Marinello. “There's ongoing risk to the risk of an partner informing authorities to collect a ransom.”

For comparable factors, an investigator said it was vanishingly unlikely that the theft had been ordered. “Stolen to order is something from films,” he said. “Nobody would touch this. It's global news and in all the newspapers. If you acquire these, if you are apprehended, you end up in prison. You cannot show it to your acquaintances, you cannot leave it to your children.”

Modifying stolen works by melting down or reshaping does reduce the worth. When it comes to diamonds, it also comes with considerable risk because contemporary cutting techniques give gems a larger and brighter appearance, and older-style stones would either attract notice or reduce value for a concealment.

Importantly, however, dismantling or re-cutting eliminates the evidence of the crime. “My guess is that the Louvre thieves will try to bring the stolen goods to locations with diamond expertise like a country, another nation or even as nearby as Antwerp, and locate an expert to cut out the gems,” suggested Marinello.

The robbery at the Louvre has already brought up concerns about protective steps at the institution, with a leaked official review expected to be published next month criticising “considerable” and “persistent” delays in modernizing systems and noting that security cameras were missing in multiple areas. But security experts say displaying precious items in older structures with a steady stream of guests comes with risks that are impossible to remove entirely.

“Historic buildings are much harder to secure,” said an art crime professor. “Many of them have nice big street-facing windows that allows for criminals to escape, and there may be preservation laws in place that mean you are unable to install them with proper bulletproof glass.”

The most solid protective measures for structures should be conceptualised “like a fortress”, noted Peter Stürmann. “There should be multiple levels to deter attackers.”

Modern buildings are fitted with state-of-the-art external CCTV cameras or integrated seismic detectors that raise alarm about a smashed window in real time, but old museums may be hesitant to uglify their exteriors. Detection devices can be hard to install to decorated surfaces. Motion and sound detectors may also have to be disabled during the day as hordes of visitors walk through a museum.

The schedule of the robbery, which took place between 9.30am and 9.40am in Paris, was typical of modern robberies, Stürmann said. “It's logical why thefts tend to happen at either opening or closing times. It’s often when security rotate and prior to the museum is crowded who actually act as additional security staff.”

Technological progress may have introduced new devices that can raise the alarm more rapidly and effectively, but it has also provided robbers new methods with which to circumvent protections. In Paris, the robbers accessed the museum’s first-floor window with a mobile equipment and cut through a glass pane with a battery-powered disc cutter.

An author said the conversation in the country about the historic structure had primarily centered on crowd control in the past decade, and not as much on security.

The institution has an on-site team of about 50 permanent emergency personnel, but their mission is mostly to protect the collection from blazes and flooding. “There is no quick reaction team,” Sciolino said. “In the end, the security of the Louvre all depends on government support and funding, and at present the nation lacks sufficient resources.”