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Breaking into the world’s most-visited museum in the middle of the day, taking eight items of invaluable Napoleonic jewellery and vanishing into the city traffic on humble scooters may seem like the most audacious of crimes, carried out for international notoriety and subsequent Hollywood film treatments.

Experts who observe patterns in global cultural theft, however, see Sunday morning’s heist at the Louvre as something more prosaic: the most recent in a series of quick-hit thefts focused more on the material value of precious stones or metals than the artifacts’ significance, perpetuating a pattern that has emerged over the last ten years in Europe, 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 valuable jewellery are entering a world-famous museum rather than a luxury jewelry store,” stated Christopher A Marinello. “The answer is simple: it’s because nowadays a Cartier store is more secure.”

A series of violent retail store thefts mean that many outlets have strengthened their security in recent years, with security personnel on their premises and wares no longer shown overnight. Museums, on the other hand, look vulnerable, in part because of the inherent reason of being public-facing institutions in historic buildings, and also the financial situation in many western countries.

“After the pandemic, authorities across the globe have reduced spending on law enforcement and the culture sector,” said Marinello. “If thieves can get into the Louvre, it shows how at risk our institutions have become. This is a horrible time to be a museum.”

The robbery of the objects – including necklaces made up of eight sapphires and 631 diamonds, the tiara of Empress Eugénie containing nearly 2,000 diamonds and a extremely expensive diadem once possessed by a royal that the robbers dropped by the roadside on their way out – has inevitably drawn comparisons with the historical theft of the Mona Lisa from the same museum, performed by the Italian handyman Vincenzo Peruggia.

Better points of reference may be the recent theft of jewellery from Dresden’s Green Vault Museum worth over €113m, the taking of a multi-million pound valuable object from Blenheim Palace the same year, the recent robbery of a large gold coin from Berlin’s Bode Museum or even a spate of robberies of sports memorabilia from American institutions.

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

If the items were to remain intact, experts say, the thieves would struggle to sell them. “It's impossible to sell something as recognizable as the Louvre’s jewels on the legal marketplace”, said an art crime researcher of the Association for Research into Crimes against Art.

“They would be immediately recognised, especially given the Ministry of Culture has published photos of the items. Even a private collector or an auction house would want to see paperwork confirming legal possession before handling such remarkable pieces.”

In the previous years, institutions were often reluctant to announce publicly about the loss of famous art pieces and would stay silent out of embarrassment. Now, as cultural robberies are more widely publicised, the keeping and selling of taken items is dangerous for any lawbreaker.

“Taking a famous painting, it has to stay complete or it becomes worthless, and you have to devise a plan to conceal it, perhaps by passing it around difficult criminal actors,” noted Marinello. “There's ongoing risk to the danger of an partner telling the police to collect a reward.”

For comparable factors, an investigator said it was highly improbable that the robbery had been ordered. “Commissioned theft is something from films,” he said. “No one would handle these items. It's global news 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 bequeath it to your family.”

Altering taken items by melting down or reshaping does lower the value. When it comes to gems, it also comes with significant danger because modern cutting techniques give stones a larger and brighter appearance, and antique-cut stones would either draw unwanted attention or reduce value for a concealment.

Importantly, however, melting down or re-cutting removes the evidence of the theft. “I suspect that the robbers will try to bring the items to locations with gem knowledge like a country, another nation or even as nearby as a city, and find someone to remove 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 released next month pointing out “considerable” and “ongoing” slow progress in modernizing equipment and noting that surveillance were missing in multiple areas. But security experts say displaying precious items in older structures with a constant flow of visitors comes with risks that are not possible to remove entirely.

“Older structures are more difficult to protect,” said Erin Thompson. “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 can’t fit them with proper bulletproof glass.”

The best protective measures for structures should be designed “as a stronghold”, said Peter Stürmann. “It should include multiple levels to deter attackers.”

Contemporary structures are equipped with advanced surveillance systems or in-built vibration sensors that alert about a broken glass in immediately, but historic institutions may be hesitant to uglify their appearance. Detection devices can be difficult to install to decorated surfaces. Motion and sound detectors may also have to be turned off during the day as crowds walk through a museum.

The timing of the robbery, which took place between morning hours in Paris, was typical of modern robberies, Stürmann said. “There’s a good reason why robberies tend to happen at either opening or closing times. Frequently when security change their shifts and prior to the museum is full of visitors who effectively act as extra protection.”

Advances in technology may have thrown up new gadgets that can notify more rapidly and efficiently, but it has also provided robbers new tools with which to bypass protections. In the city, the thieves accessed the museum’s upper level with a mobile equipment and breached a window with a electric tool.

Elaine Sciolino said the conversation in the country about the historic structure had mostly centered on visitor management in the past decade, and less on protection.

The museum has an on-site team of about fifty full-time firefighters, but their purpose is mostly to safeguard the artworks from fires and flooding. “There isn't a quick reaction team,” Sciolino said. “In the end, the safety of the Louvre all comes down to government support and money, and at present France lacks sufficient money.”