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Entering the world’s most-visited art institution in the middle of the day, grabbing eight items of invaluable Napoleonic jewellery and disappearing into Paris traffic on simple scooters may seem like the most audacious of crimes, executed for international notoriety and subsequent movie adaptations.

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 monetary worth of valuable gems or metals than the historical importance, continuing a pattern that has emerged over the last decade in Europe, the UK and the US. The location, they propose, would have been of lesser importance to the criminals.

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

A spate of aggressive jewellery shop thefts mean that many stores have strengthened their security in recent years, with armed guards on their locations and wares no longer shown overnight. Museums, meanwhile, look more exposed, partly because of the in-built factor of being public-facing institutions in historic buildings, and partly the current economic climate in many developed nations.

“After the pandemic, authorities across the world have cut back on law enforcement and the arts funding,” said Marinello. “With criminals entering the Louvre, it demonstrates how vulnerable our museums have become. This is a horrible 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 extremely expensive crown once owned by Napoleon III’s wife that the robbers dropped by the roadside on their way out – has inevitably drawn comparisons with the 1911 theft of the Mona Lisa from the same museum, performed by the worker Vincenzo Peruggia.

Better points of reference may be the recent burglary of jewellery from Dresden’s Green Vault Museum worth over €113m, the theft of a multi-million pound gold toilet from Blenheim Palace the that year, the recent heist of a valuable item from a European museum or even a spate of thefts of collector items from American institutions.

“It's a clear trend here,” said Marinello. “Smash, grab, and melt it down as quickly as possible.”

If the items were to stay whole, specialists say, the thieves would find it hard to sell them. “There’s no way 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 would be immediately recognised, especially given the cultural authorities has released images of the items. Even a individual buyer or an auction house would want to see paperwork establishing proper ownership before touching such striking pieces.”

In the previous years, museums were often hesitant to go public about the disappearance of famous works of art and would remain quiet out of shame. These days, as cultural robberies are more reported on, the storage and selling of stolen art is dangerous for any criminal.

“If you steal a famous painting, it has to stay complete or it becomes valueless, and you have to devise a scheme to conceal it, perhaps by passing it around difficult criminal actors,” noted Marinello. “There's ongoing risk to the danger of an accomplice informing authorities to collect a ransom.”

For similar reasons, an art detective said it was vanishingly unlikely that the robbery had been ordered. “Stolen to order is something from Hollywood movies,” he said. “Nobody would touch this. It's global news and in all the newspapers. If you buy this, if you are apprehended, you end up in prison. You cannot show it to your acquaintances, you cannot bequeath it to your children.”

Modifying taken items by melting down or re-cutting does lower the worth. When it comes to diamonds, it also comes with considerable risk because modern cutting techniques give gems a larger and brighter surface area, and antique-cut stones would either draw unwanted attention or barter the price down for a concealment.

Crucially, however, dismantling or reshaping removes the proof of the crime. “I suspect that the Louvre thieves will try to bring the items to locations with gem knowledge like a country, India or even as close as Antwerp, 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 institution, with a unauthorized official review expected to be released next month criticising “considerable” and “ongoing” delays in updating systems and observing that security cameras were missing in many rooms. But specialists say showing precious items in older structures with a steady stream of visitors comes with risks that are not possible to eliminate completely.

“Historic buildings are much harder to protect,” said an art crime professor. “Many of them have large accessible windows that makes it easy for thieves to get away, and there may be preservation laws in place that mean you are unable to install them with proper bulletproof glass.”

The best protective measures for buildings should be designed “like a fortress”, said Peter Stürmann. “It should include multiple levels to deter intruders.”

Modern buildings are fitted with advanced external CCTV cameras or in-built vibration sensors that raise alarm about a broken glass in real time, but historic institutions may be hesitant to uglify their appearance. Laser scanners can be difficult to fit to stuccoed ceilings. Motion and sound detectors may also have to be turned off during the day as hordes of visitors walk through a museum.

The timing of the Louvre raid, which took place between 9.30am and 9.40am local time, was common of recent thefts, Stürmann said. “It's logical why robberies tend to happen at either opening or closing times. Frequently when guards change their shifts and before the museum is crowded who effectively act as extra protection.”

Technological progress may have introduced new gadgets that can raise the alarm more quickly and effectively, but it has also provided robbers new tools with which to bypass protections. In the city, the thieves accessed the museum’s upper level with a vehicle-mounted ladder and breached a window with a battery-powered disc cutter.

An author said the conversation in the country about the historic structure had primarily focused on visitor management in the past decade, and not as much on protection.

The institution has an in-house team of about fifty permanent firefighters, but their purpose is mainly to protect the collection from blazes and water damage. “There is no quick reaction team,” Sciolino said. “Ultimately, the security of the Louvre all comes down to government support and funding, and currently the nation simply has no money.”