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Breaking into the world’s most-visited art institution in the middle of the day, taking eight pieces of priceless Napoleonic jewellery and vanishing into Paris traffic on simple scooters may seem like the boldest of crimes, carried out for international notoriety and ensuing movie adaptations.

Specialists who observe trends in international art crime, however, see Sunday morning’s robbery at the Louvre as a more practical matter: the most recent in a series of quick-hit thefts centered more on the monetary worth of precious stones or materials than the historical importance, continuing a pattern that has emerged over the last decade in Europe, Britain and the US. The location, they propose, would have been of secondary concern to the thieves.

“You may ask why thieves who want to steal valuable jewellery are breaking into a globally renowned museum rather than a luxury jewelry store,” said Christopher A Marinello. “It's straightforward: it’s because nowadays a high-end boutique is more secure.”

A spate of aggressive jewellery shop thefts mean that many stores have strengthened their security in recent years, with security personnel on their premises and wares no longer kept on display overnight. Cultural institutions, meanwhile, look more exposed, in part because of the inherent factor of being accessible institutions in older structures, and also the financial situation in many western countries.

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

The theft of the items – including necklaces made up of eight sapphires and hundreds of gems, the tiara of Empress Eugénie featuring thousands of diamonds and a hugely valuable diadem once possessed by Napoleon III’s wife that the robbers dropped by the street on their way out – has naturally drawn comparisons with the historical theft of the Mona Lisa from the Louvre, performed by the Italian handyman Vincenzo Peruggia.

Better points of reference may be the 2019 theft of valuables from a German institution worth over €113m, the taking of a £4.75m gold toilet from a UK landmark the that year, the 2017 robbery of a valuable item from Berlin’s Bode Museum or even a spate of thefts of sports memorabilia from US mining museums.

“There’s a simple pattern here,” explained 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 recognizable as the museum's gems on the legal marketplace”, commented an art crime researcher of the a relevant organization.

“They would be immediately recognised, particularly 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 proper ownership before handling such striking pieces.”

In the previous years, institutions were often hesitant to announce publicly about the disappearance of famous works of art and would stay silent out of embarrassment. Now, as art thefts are more widely publicised, the storage and selling of taken items is dangerous for any lawbreaker.

“If you steal a famous painting, it has to remain intact or it becomes valueless, and you have to devise a scheme to keep it in hiding, perhaps by passing it around dangerous individuals,” noted Marinello. “There's ongoing risk to the risk of an accomplice telling the police to cash in a reward.”

For similar reasons, an art detective said it was highly improbable that the robbery had been commissioned. “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 buy this, if you are apprehended, you end up in prison. You cannot show it to your friends, you cannot leave it to your children.”

Altering stolen works by dismantling or re-cutting does lower the value. When it comes to diamonds, it also comes with significant danger because contemporary cutting techniques give gems a bigger and lighter appearance, and older-style stones would either attract notice or reduce value for a coverup.

Crucially, however, melting down or re-cutting removes the evidence of the theft. “I suspect that the robbers will try to bring the stolen goods to locations with diamond expertise like a country, another nation or even as nearby as a city, and locate an expert to cut out the stones,” suggested Marinello.

The heist at the Louvre has already brought up concerns about security measures at the museum, with a leaked official review expected to be released next month pointing out “considerable” and “persistent” slow progress in updating systems and noting that security cameras were lacking in multiple areas. But specialists say displaying precious items in historic buildings with a steady stream of visitors comes with risks that are impossible to eliminate completely.

“Historic buildings are much harder to protect,” said Erin Thompson. “Many of them have large accessible windows that allows for thieves 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 conceptualised “as a stronghold”, said Peter Stürmann. “It should include several layers to repel attackers.”

Contemporary structures 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 reluctant to uglify their exteriors. Detection devices can be hard to install to stuccoed ceilings. Motion and sound detectors may also have to be turned off during the day as crowds stomp through a museum.

The timing of the robbery, which occurred between 9.30am and 9.40am local time, was common of recent thefts, 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 notify more quickly and effectively, but it has also provided thieves new methods with which to bypass protections. In the city, the thieves accessed the museum’s first-floor window with a vehicle-mounted ladder and breached a window with a electric tool.

Elaine Sciolino said the conversation in France about the 232-year-old building had mostly focused on crowd control in the past decade, and less on protection.

The institution has an in-house brigade of about fifty permanent emergency personnel, but their purpose is mainly to protect the artworks from blazes and flooding. “There is no rapid-response unit,” Sciolino said. “In the end, the safety of the Louvre all depends on political will and money, and currently France simply has no resources.”