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Breaking into the world’s most-visited art institution in broad daylight, taking eight items of invaluable Napoleonic jewellery and disappearing into the city traffic on humble scooters may seem like the boldest of crimes, executed for global fame and subsequent movie adaptations.

Specialists who observe trends in global cultural theft, however, see Sunday morning’s heist at the Louvre as a more practical matter: the most recent in a series of quick-hit thefts focused more on the material value of precious stones or metals than the historical importance, perpetuating a pattern that has appeared over the last decade in Germany, the UK and the US. The location, they suggest, would have been of secondary concern to the criminals.

“One might wonder why thieves who want to take valuable jewellery are entering a globally renowned museum rather than a Cartier store,” stated Christopher A Marinello. “It's straightforward: it’s because these days a Cartier store is better protected.”

A spate of violent jewellery shop thefts mean that many outlets have beefed up their security in recent years, with armed guards on their locations and wares no longer kept on display overnight. Museums, meanwhile, look vulnerable, partly because of the inherent factor of being accessible institutions in historic buildings, and partly the financial situation in many western countries.

“Since Covid, governments across the world have cut back on police and the culture sector,” said Marinello. “If thieves can get into the Louvre, it shows how vulnerable our institutions have become. This is a horrible time to be a museum.”

The theft of the items – featuring necklaces made up of eight sapphires and 631 diamonds, the crown of a historical figure containing nearly 2,000 diamonds and a extremely expensive diadem once possessed by Napoleon III’s wife that the robbers dropped by the roadside on their way out – has naturally drawn comparisons with the historical theft of the Mona Lisa from the Louvre, carried out by the Italian handyman Vincenzo Peruggia.

Better points of reference may be the recent burglary of jewellery from Dresden’s Green Vault Museum worth over millions, the theft of a £4.75m valuable object from a UK landmark the same year, the 2017 robbery of a valuable item from a European 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 artefacts were to remain intact, experts say, the thieves would struggle to sell them. “It's impossible to trade something as recognizable 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, especially given the cultural authorities has published photos of the pieces. Even a individual buyer or an sales venue would want to see documentation confirming proper ownership before touching such remarkable pieces.”

In the past, institutions were often hesitant to announce publicly about the loss of well-known art pieces and would remain quiet out of shame. Now, as art thefts are more reported on, the keeping and sale of taken items is risky business for any lawbreaker.

“Taking a famous painting, it has to stay complete or it becomes worthless, and you have to conceive of a plan to keep it in hiding, perhaps by passing it around difficult criminal actors,” noted Marinello. “And you’re constantly exposed to the risk of an partner telling the police to cash in a ransom.”

For similar reasons, 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 global news and in all the media. If you acquire these, if you are apprehended, you go to jail. You can't display it to your acquaintances, you cannot leave it to your family.”

Modifying taken items by melting down or re-cutting does reduce the worth. When it comes to diamonds, it also comes with significant danger because modern cutting techniques give stones a larger and lighter appearance, and older-style stones would either draw unwanted attention or barter the price down for a coverup.

Importantly, however, melting down or re-cutting removes the evidence of the theft. “My guess is that the Louvre thieves will try to take the stolen goods to locations with diamond expertise like a country, another nation or even as close as Antwerp, and find someone to remove the stones,” suggested Marinello.

The robbery at the Louvre has already raised questions about protective steps at the institution, with a leaked official review expected to be published next month criticising “significant” and “ongoing” slow progress in updating systems and noting that surveillance were lacking in many rooms. But specialists say displaying valuable objects in historic buildings with a constant flow of guests comes with dangers that are not possible to eliminate completely.

“Historic buildings are more difficult to secure,” said Erin Thompson. “They often have large accessible 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 most solid security systems for buildings should be conceptualised “like a fortress”, noted a security advisor. “It should include several layers to deter attackers.”

Modern buildings are fitted with state-of-the-art surveillance systems or in-built seismic detectors that alert about a broken glass in immediately, but old museums may be hesitant to alter their exteriors. Detection devices can be hard to fit to stuccoed ceilings. Sensors may also have to be disabled during the day as hordes of visitors walk through a museum.

The timing of the robbery, which took place between 9.30am and 9.40am in Paris, was common 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 before the museum is full of visitors who effectively act as extra protection.”

Technological progress may have introduced new gadgets that can raise the alarm more rapidly and effectively, but it has also provided robbers new methods with which to bypass security measures. In the city, the thieves accessed the museum’s first-floor window with a vehicle-mounted ladder and breached a glass pane with a electric tool.

An author said the conversation in the country about the historic building had primarily focused on visitor management in the past decade, and less on security.

The institution has an on-site brigade of about 50 full-time emergency personnel, but their mission is mainly to protect the artworks from blazes and flooding. “There isn't a quick reaction team,” Sciolino said. “In the end, the safety of the Louvre all depends on government support and funding, and at present France lacks sufficient resources.”