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Entering the world’s most-visited art institution in the middle of the day, taking eight pieces of priceless Napoleonic jewellery and vanishing into the city traffic on simple scooters may seem like the boldest of crimes, carried out for global fame and subsequent movie adaptations.

Experts who study trends in global cultural theft, however, see Sunday morning’s robbery at the Louvre as something more prosaic: the latest in a string of quick-hit thefts focused more on the material value of valuable gems or metals than the historical importance, perpetuating a trend that has appeared over the last decade in Europe, the UK and the US. The location, they propose, would have been of secondary concern to the criminals.

“One might wonder why thieves who want to take expensive jewellery are breaking into a world-famous museum rather than a luxury jewelry store,” stated Christopher A Marinello. “The answer is simple: it’s because nowadays a high-end boutique is better protected.”

A series of violent retail store thefts indicate that many outlets have strengthened their security in the past few years, with armed guards on their locations and wares no longer shown overnight. Cultural institutions, on the other hand, look vulnerable, in part because of the inherent reason of being public-facing institutions in older structures, and partly the financial situation in many western countries.

“Since Covid, authorities across the world have reduced spending on law enforcement and the culture sector,” said Marinello. “With criminals entering the Louvre, it demonstrates how at risk our museums have become. This is a horrible time to be a museum.”

The theft of the objects – featuring jewelry pieces made up of precious stones and 631 diamonds, the crown of Empress Eugénie containing nearly 2,000 diamonds and a extremely expensive diadem once owned by a royal that the thieves left by the street on their way out – has naturally been compared with the 1911 theft of the Mona Lisa from the same museum, performed by the Italian handyman Vincenzo Peruggia.

Better comparisons may be the recent theft of jewellery from Dresden’s Green Vault Museum worth over €113m, the taking of a multi-million pound gold toilet from a UK landmark the same year, the 2017 robbery of a valuable item from a European 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 artefacts were to stay whole, specialists say, the criminals would find it hard to sell them. “There’s no way to trade something as recognizable as the Louvre’s jewels on the licit market”, 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 private collector or an sales venue 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 works of art and would stay silent out of shame. Now, as cultural robberies are more widely publicised, the storage and sale of stolen art is risky business for any criminal.

“If you steal a Picasso, it has to stay complete or it becomes valueless, and you have to conceive of a plan to conceal it, perhaps by passing it around dangerous individuals,” noted Marinello. “And you’re constantly exposed to the danger of an partner informing authorities to cash in a ransom.”

For comparable factors, an investigator said it was vanishingly unlikely that the robbery 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 newspapers. If you acquire these, if you get caught, you go to jail. You cannot show it to your acquaintances, you cannot bequeath it to your children.”

Altering taken items by melting down or reshaping does reduce the worth. When it comes to gems, it also comes with considerable risk because modern methods give stones a bigger and brighter surface area, and antique-cut stones would either attract notice or reduce value for a concealment.

Crucially, however, dismantling or re-cutting removes the evidence of the crime. “I suspect that the robbers will try to bring the stolen goods to places with gem knowledge like Israel, India or even as nearby as a city, and find someone to cut out the gems,” said Marinello.

The robbery at the Louvre has already brought up concerns about security measures at the museum, with a unauthorized state auditor report expected to be published soon pointing out “considerable” and “ongoing” delays in updating systems and noting that surveillance were lacking in many rooms. But security experts say showing precious items in older structures with a constant flow of visitors comes with risks that are not possible to remove entirely.

“Older structures are much harder to protect,” explained Erin Thompson. “Many of them have nice big street-facing windows that allows for criminals to get away, and there may be building protection statutes in place that mean you are unable to install them with proper bulletproof glass.”

The most solid protective measures for buildings should be designed “like a fortress”, noted a security advisor. “There should be multiple levels to deter attackers.”

Contemporary structures are equipped with advanced surveillance systems or integrated seismic detectors that raise alarm about a smashed window in real time, but old museums may be reluctant to alter their appearance. Laser scanners can be difficult to fit to stuccoed ceilings. Sensors may also have to be disabled during the daytime as hordes of visitors walk through a museum.

The schedule of the Louvre raid, which took place between 9.30am and 9.40am local time, was typical of recent thefts, Stürmann said. “It's logical why thefts 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.”

Technological progress may have thrown up new gadgets that can notify more quickly and effectively, but it has also given robbers new tools with which to bypass security measures. In the city, the thieves reached the museum’s first-floor window with a vehicle-mounted ladder and cut through a window with a electric tool.

Elaine Sciolino said the discussion in France about the 232-year-old structure had primarily focused on crowd control in the past decade, and not as much on protection.

The institution has an in-house team of about 50 permanent emergency personnel, but their mission is mainly to protect the collection from fires and flooding. “There is no rapid-response unit,” Sciolino said. “Ultimately, the safety of the Louvre all depends on political will and funding, and currently France simply has no money.”