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Entering the world’s most-visited art institution in broad daylight, taking eight pieces of priceless Napoleonic jewellery and vanishing into the city traffic on simple scooters may seem like the boldest of crimes, executed for international notoriety and ensuing movie adaptations.

Specialists who observe patterns in international art crime, however, see Sunday morning’s robbery at the Louvre as a more practical matter: the latest in a series of quick-hit thefts focused more on the monetary worth of valuable gems or materials than the artifacts’ significance, perpetuating a trend that has appeared over the last ten years in Germany, the UK and the US. The location, they propose, would have been of secondary concern to the criminals.

“You may ask why criminals who want to take expensive jewellery are entering a globally renowned museum rather than a luxury jewelry store,” stated Christopher A Marinello. “The answer is simple: it’s because these days a high-end boutique is more secure.”

A series of aggressive retail store thefts mean that many stores have beefed up their protection in recent years, with armed guards on their locations and wares no longer kept on display overnight. Museums, meanwhile, look more exposed, partly because of the inherent factor of being accessible institutions in older structures, and also the current economic climate in many western countries.

“Since Covid, authorities across the globe have reduced spending on law enforcement and the culture sector,” said Marinello. “If thieves can get into the Louvre, it demonstrates how at risk our museums have become. This is a difficult time to be a museum.”

The robbery of the objects – including necklaces made up of eight sapphires and 631 diamonds, the crown of a historical figure containing thousands of diamonds and a hugely valuable crown once owned by Napoleon III’s wife that the thieves left by the roadside on their way out – has naturally been compared with the 1911 theft of the Mona Lisa from the Louvre, carried out by the Italian handyman the thief.

More relevant comparisons may be the recent theft of valuables from a German institution worth over €113m, the theft of a £4.75m valuable object from Blenheim Palace the that year, the 2017 robbery of a large gold coin from Berlin’s Bode Museum or even a spate of thefts of collector items from US mining museums.

“It's a clear trend here,” said Marinello. “Break in, take items, and dismantle them as rapidly as possible.”

If the items were to stay whole, specialists say, the thieves would find it hard to sell them. “It's impossible to trade 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 are too well-known, particularly given the cultural authorities has published photos of the items. Even a individual buyer or an auction house would want to see documentation confirming legal possession before touching such striking pieces.”

In the previous years, museums were often reluctant to announce publicly about the disappearance of well-known works of art and would stay silent out of shame. Now, as art thefts are more widely publicised, the keeping and selling of taken items is risky business for any lawbreaker.

“If you steal a Picasso, it has to stay complete or it becomes worthless, and you have to conceive of a scheme to keep it in hiding, perhaps by moving it among dangerous individuals,” said Marinello. “There's ongoing risk to the danger of an partner telling the police to cash in a ransom.”

For comparable factors, an investigator said it was vanishingly unlikely that the robbery had been commissioned. “Stolen to order 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 get caught, you go to jail. You can't display it to your acquaintances, you cannot leave it to your family.”

Altering taken items by dismantling or re-cutting does reduce the worth. When it comes to gems, it also comes with considerable risk because contemporary cutting techniques give gems a bigger and lighter surface area, and older-style stones would either draw unwanted attention or reduce value for a coverup.

Importantly, however, dismantling or reshaping removes the evidence of the theft. “I suspect that the robbers will try to bring the items to places with diamond expertise like Israel, India or even as nearby as a city, and locate an expert to cut out the stones,” said Marinello.

The robbery at the Louvre has already brought up concerns about protective steps at the museum, with a unauthorized official review expected to be published soon criticising “significant” and “persistent” slow progress in updating systems and noting that security cameras were missing in many rooms. But security experts say displaying precious items in historic buildings with a steady stream of visitors comes with dangers that are impossible to remove entirely.

“Older structures are more difficult to protect,” said Erin Thompson. “Many of them have nice big street-facing windows that makes it easy for criminals to get away, and there may be building protection statutes in place that mean you are unable to install them with secure windows.”

The best protective measures for buildings should be designed “as a stronghold”, noted Peter Stürmann. “It should include multiple levels to repel attackers.”

Contemporary structures are fitted with state-of-the-art surveillance systems or in-built seismic detectors that raise alarm about a smashed window in immediately, but historic institutions may be hesitant to alter their appearance. Laser scanners can be difficult to install to decorated surfaces. Motion and sound detectors may also have to be disabled during the day as crowds walk through a museum.

The timing of the robbery, which occurred between morning hours in Paris, was common of modern robberies, Stürmann said. “It's logical why robberies 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.”

Advances in technology may have thrown up new gadgets that can raise the alarm more rapidly and efficiently, but it has also given robbers new methods with which to bypass security measures. In Paris, the thieves reached the museum’s upper level with a mobile equipment and cut through a window with a battery-powered disc cutter.

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

The institution has an in-house brigade of about 50 full-time emergency personnel, but their purpose is mainly to safeguard the artworks from blazes and water damage. “There is no rapid-response unit,” Sciolino said. “Ultimately, the safety of the Louvre all comes down to government support and money, and currently France simply has no resources.”