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Entering the world’s most-visited art institution in broad daylight, 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 international notoriety and subsequent Hollywood film treatments.

Experts who study trends in international art crime, however, see the recent robbery at the Louvre as a more practical matter: the latest in a string of quick-hit thefts focused more on the material value of precious stones or metals than the historical importance, continuing a pattern that has appeared over the last decade in Europe, the UK and the US. The location, they suggest, would have been of secondary concern to the thieves.

“You may ask why thieves who want to take valuable jewellery are entering a globally renowned museum rather than a luxury jewelry store,” stated Christopher A Marinello. “It's straightforward: it’s because these days a high-end boutique is better protected.”

A spate of violent jewellery shop thefts indicate that many stores have beefed up their security in the past few years, with armed guards on their locations and merchandise no longer shown overnight. Cultural institutions, meanwhile, look more exposed, in part because of the inherent reason of being public-facing institutions in historic buildings, and partly the current economic climate in many western countries.

“Since Covid, authorities across the globe have reduced spending on law enforcement and the culture sector,” noted Marinello. “With criminals entering the Louvre, it demonstrates how vulnerable our institutions have become. This is a difficult time to be a museum.”

The theft of the objects – including necklaces made up of precious stones and 631 diamonds, the crown of Empress Eugénie containing thousands of diamonds and a extremely expensive diadem once owned by Napoleon III’s wife that the robbers left by the street on their way out – has inevitably drawn comparisons with the 1911 theft of the famous painting from the Louvre, carried out by the Italian handyman Vincenzo Peruggia.

Better points of reference may be the 2019 burglary of valuables from Dresden’s Green Vault Museum worth over millions, the taking of a multi-million pound valuable object from Blenheim Palace the same year, the 2017 heist of a valuable item from Berlin’s Bode Museum or even a spate of thefts of sports memorabilia from American institutions.

“There’s a simple pattern here,” explained Marinello. “Break in, take items, and dismantle them as rapidly as possible.”

If the artefacts were to remain intact, experts say, the thieves would find it hard to find a buyer. “There’s no way to trade something as recognizable as the Louvre’s jewels on the licit market”, said Lynda Albertson of the a relevant organization.

“They are too well-known, especially given the cultural authorities has published photos of the pieces. Even a private collector or an sales venue would want to see documentation confirming proper ownership before touching such remarkable pieces.”

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

“If you steal a Picasso, it has to remain intact or it becomes worthless, and you have to devise a plan to keep it in hiding, maybe by passing it around dangerous individuals,” noted Marinello. “And you’re constantly exposed to the risk of an accomplice informing authorities to cash in a ransom.”

For similar reasons, an investigator said it was highly improbable that the theft had been ordered. “Stolen to order is something from Hollywood movies,” he said. “No one would handle these items. It's global news and in all the newspapers. If you buy this, if you get caught, you end up in prison. You can't display it to your acquaintances, you cannot bequeath it to your children.”

Altering stolen works by dismantling or reshaping does reduce the value. When it comes to diamonds, it also comes with significant danger because contemporary methods give gems a larger and lighter surface area, and older-style stones would either attract notice or reduce value for a coverup.

Importantly, however, dismantling or re-cutting removes the evidence of the crime. “I suspect that the Louvre thieves will try to bring the items to places with diamond expertise like Israel, another nation or even as close as Antwerp, and locate an expert to cut out the gems,” suggested Marinello.

The heist at the Louvre has already brought up concerns about protective steps at the museum, with a unauthorized official review expected to be published soon criticising “considerable” and “persistent” slow progress in updating systems and noting that surveillance were lacking in many rooms. But security experts say showing valuable objects in historic buildings with a steady stream of visitors comes with dangers that are not possible to remove entirely.

“Historic buildings are much harder to secure,” said an art crime professor. “They often have large accessible windows that allows for thieves to escape, and there may be building protection statutes in place that mean you can’t fit them with proper bulletproof glass.”

The most solid security systems for buildings should be conceptualised “as a stronghold”, said Peter Stürmann. “It should include multiple levels to repel intruders.”

Modern buildings are fitted with advanced external CCTV cameras or in-built vibration sensors that raise alarm about a smashed window in real time, but old museums may be hesitant to uglify their exteriors. Laser scanners can be difficult to fit to decorated surfaces. Motion and sound detectors may also have to be disabled during the daytime as crowds stomp through a museum.

The schedule of the robbery, which occurred between morning hours in Paris, was common of modern robberies, Stürmann said. “There’s a good reason why thefts tend to happen at either opening or closing times. It’s often when guards rotate and before the museum is crowded who effectively act as additional security staff.”

Technological progress may have introduced new devices that can notify more rapidly and efficiently, but it has also given robbers new tools with which to circumvent protections. In Paris, the thieves accessed the museum’s first-floor window with a mobile equipment and cut through a window with a electric tool.

Elaine Sciolino said the conversation in France about the historic building had primarily centered on crowd control in recent years, and not as much on protection.

The institution has an on-site team of about fifty full-time firefighters, but their purpose is mostly to protect the artworks from fires and flooding. “There is no quick reaction team,” Sciolino said. “In the end, the safety of the Louvre all depends on political will and funding, and currently the nation simply has no money.”