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Entering the planet's most popular art institution in broad daylight, grabbing eight pieces of priceless Napoleonic jewellery and disappearing into the city traffic on simple scooters may seem like the most audacious of crimes, carried out for global fame and ensuing Hollywood film treatments.

Experts who study patterns in international art crime, however, see Sunday morning’s robbery at the Louvre as a more practical matter: the most recent in a string of quick-hit thefts focused more on the material value of precious stones or metals than the historical importance, perpetuating a pattern that has emerged over the last decade in Germany, Britain and the US. The venue, they propose, would have been of lesser importance to the thieves.

“One might wonder why criminals who want to steal valuable jewellery are entering a world-famous museum rather than a luxury jewelry store,” said Christopher A Marinello. “The answer is simple: it’s because these days a Cartier store is better protected.”

A spate of violent retail store thefts mean that many stores have beefed up their protection in the past few years, with armed guards on their premises and merchandise no longer kept on display overnight. Museums, on the other hand, look vulnerable, partly because of the in-built reason of being public-facing institutions in older structures, and also the current economic climate in many western countries.

“Since Covid, authorities across the world have cut back 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 theft of the objects – including jewelry pieces made up of eight sapphires and 631 diamonds, the crown of Empress Eugénie containing thousands of diamonds and a hugely valuable diadem once possessed by Napoleon III’s wife that the thieves dropped by the street on their way out – has inevitably 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 2019 burglary of valuables from a German institution worth over millions, the taking of a multi-million pound valuable object from Blenheim Palace the same year, the recent heist of a valuable item 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. “Smash, grab, and melt it down as quickly as possible.”

If the artefacts were to stay whole, experts say, the criminals would find it hard to sell them. “It's impossible to sell something as recognizable as the Louvre’s jewels on the legal marketplace”, commented Lynda Albertson of the a relevant organization.

“They would be immediately recognised, especially given the cultural authorities has released images of the pieces. Even a individual buyer or an auction house would want to see paperwork confirming proper ownership before touching such striking pieces.”

In the previous years, institutions were often reluctant to announce publicly about the disappearance of well-known works of art and would remain quiet out of shame. These days, as art thefts are more widely publicised, the keeping and selling of taken items is risky business for any criminal.

“If you steal a famous painting, it has to stay complete or it becomes worthless, and you have to conceive of a plan to conceal it, maybe by moving it among difficult criminal actors,” said Marinello. “There's ongoing risk to the risk of an accomplice informing authorities to collect a ransom.”

For similar reasons, 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 all around the world and in all the media. If you acquire these, if you are apprehended, you go to jail. You cannot show it to your friends, you cannot bequeath it to your children.”

Altering stolen works by dismantling or reshaping does lower the worth. When it comes to diamonds, it also comes with significant danger because modern methods give gems a bigger and brighter surface area, and antique-cut stones would either draw unwanted attention or reduce value for a concealment.

Crucially, however, melting down or reshaping eliminates the proof of the crime. “I suspect that the Louvre thieves will try to bring the stolen goods to places with gem knowledge like Israel, another nation or even as nearby as a city, and find someone to cut out the stones,” suggested Marinello.

The robbery at the Louvre has already raised questions about security measures at the museum, with a leaked state auditor report expected to be published next month criticising “significant” and “ongoing” delays in updating systems and noting that surveillance were missing in many rooms. But security experts say displaying precious items in historic buildings with a constant flow of guests comes with dangers that are impossible to eliminate completely.

“Historic buildings are more difficult to protect,” explained an art crime professor. “They often have large accessible windows that allows for criminals to get away, and there may be preservation laws in place that mean you can’t fit them with secure windows.”

The most solid security systems for structures should be designed “as a stronghold”, noted Peter Stürmann. “There should be multiple levels to deter attackers.”

Modern buildings are fitted with advanced surveillance systems or in-built seismic detectors that alert about a broken glass in real time, but old museums may be hesitant to alter their exteriors. Laser scanners can be hard to fit to stuccoed ceilings. Motion and sound detectors may also have to be disabled during the daytime as hordes of visitors stomp through a museum.

The schedule of the Louvre raid, which took place between morning hours in Paris, was typical of modern robberies, Stürmann said. “It's logical why thefts tend to happen at either start or end of day. Frequently when guards change their shifts and before the museum is full of visitors who actually act as additional security staff.”

Technological progress may have introduced new devices that can raise the alarm more quickly and efficiently, but it has also given thieves new tools with which to circumvent security measures. In the city, the robbers accessed the museum’s first-floor window 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 primarily focused on visitor management in recent years, and less on protection.

The institution has an on-site brigade of about 50 full-time emergency personnel, but their mission is mostly to protect the artworks from blazes and flooding. “There is no rapid-response unit,” Sciolino said. “Ultimately, the safety of the Louvre all comes down to government support and funding, and currently the nation lacks sufficient money.”