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Entering the planet's most popular museum in broad daylight, grabbing eight items of invaluable Napoleonic jewellery and disappearing into Paris traffic on humble scooters may seem like the most audacious of crimes, carried out for international notoriety and ensuing Hollywood film treatments.

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 string of smash-and-grab thefts focused more on the material value of valuable gems or materials than the historical importance, continuing a pattern that has emerged over the last decade in Germany, Britain and the US. The location, they suggest, would have been of lesser importance to the criminals.

“You may ask why thieves who want to steal expensive jewellery are entering a globally renowned museum rather than a luxury jewelry store,” said Christopher A Marinello. “The answer is simple: it’s because these days a Cartier store is more secure.”

A spate of aggressive retail store thefts mean that many stores have strengthened their security in recent years, with armed guards on their premises and wares no longer kept on display overnight. Cultural institutions, meanwhile, look vulnerable, partly because of the inherent factor of being accessible institutions in older structures, and also the financial situation in many western countries.

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

The theft of the objects – featuring jewelry pieces 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 a royal that the thieves dropped by the roadside on their way out – has naturally drawn comparisons with the 1911 theft of the Mona Lisa from the Louvre, performed by the Italian handyman the thief.

Better comparisons may be the 2019 burglary of valuables from Dresden’s Green Vault Museum worth over millions, the theft of a multi-million pound valuable object from a UK landmark the same year, the 2017 heist of a valuable item from Berlin’s Bode Museum or even a spate of robberies of collector items from American institutions.

“There’s a simple pattern here,” said Marinello. “Smash, grab, and melt it down 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 legal marketplace”, said Lynda Albertson of the Association for Research into Crimes against Art.

“They are too well-known, especially given the cultural authorities has released images of the pieces. Even a individual buyer or an auction house would want to see paperwork establishing legal possession before handling such striking pieces.”

In the past, museums were often hesitant to go public about the loss of well-known art pieces and would stay silent out of shame. Now, as art thefts are more reported on, the keeping and selling of taken items is dangerous for any lawbreaker.

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

For comparable factors, an art detective said it was vanishingly unlikely that the robbery had been commissioned. “Stolen to order is something from films,” he said. “No one would handle these items. It’s all around the world 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 leave it to your family.”

Altering taken items by melting down or re-cutting does lower the value. When it comes to gems, it also comes with significant danger because contemporary methods give stones a larger and lighter surface area, and antique-cut stones would either draw unwanted attention or barter the price down for a concealment.

Importantly, however, dismantling or re-cutting removes the evidence of the crime. “My guess is that the robbers will try to bring the stolen goods to places with diamond expertise like a country, another nation or even as close as Antwerp, and find someone to remove the gems,” suggested Marinello.

The robbery at the Louvre has already brought up concerns about security measures at the institution, with a unauthorized official review expected to be published next month criticising “considerable” and “persistent” delays in modernizing equipment and observing that security cameras were missing in many rooms. But specialists say displaying precious items in historic buildings with a constant flow of visitors comes with dangers that are impossible to remove entirely.

“Older structures are more difficult to protect,” said Erin Thompson. “They often have nice big street-facing windows that makes it easy for thieves to get away, and there may be building protection statutes in place that mean you can’t fit them with secure windows.”

The best protective measures for buildings should be conceptualised “as a stronghold”, said Peter Stürmann. “It should include multiple levels to deter intruders.”

Contemporary structures are fitted with state-of-the-art external CCTV cameras or integrated vibration sensors that alert about a broken glass in real time, but historic institutions may be reluctant to uglify their appearance. Detection devices can be difficult to install to decorated surfaces. 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 local time, was common of modern robberies, Stürmann said. “There’s a good reason 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 effectively act as extra protection.”

Technological progress may have introduced new devices that can raise the alarm more quickly and efficiently, but it has also provided robbers new tools with which to circumvent protections. In the city, the thieves accessed the museum’s first-floor window with a mobile equipment and breached a window with a electric tool.

An author said the discussion in the country about the historic structure had mostly centered on visitor management in the past decade, and less on security.

The museum has an in-house brigade of about fifty full-time emergency personnel, but their purpose is mostly to protect the artworks from fires and flooding. “There is no quick reaction team,” Sciolino said. “Ultimately, the security of the Louvre all comes down to political will and funding, and currently the nation lacks sufficient resources.”