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Breaking into the world’s most-visited museum in the middle of the day, taking eight pieces of priceless Napoleonic jewellery and vanishing into Paris traffic on humble scooters may seem like the most audacious of crimes, executed for global fame and subsequent Hollywood film treatments.

Specialists who study trends in international art crime, however, see Sunday morning’s robbery at the Louvre as something more prosaic: the latest in a string of quick-hit thefts focused more on the monetary worth of precious stones or metals than the historical importance, continuing a trend that has appeared over the last decade in Europe, Britain and the US. The location, they propose, would have been of secondary concern to the thieves.

“One might wonder why criminals who want to take valuable jewellery are breaking into a globally renowned museum rather than a Cartier store,” said 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 mean that many stores have beefed up their security in recent years, with security personnel on their premises and merchandise no longer kept on display overnight. Museums, on the other hand, look vulnerable, partly because of the inherent reason of being public-facing institutions in older structures, and partly the financial situation in many western countries.

“Since Covid, governments across the world have reduced spending on law enforcement and the culture sector,” noted Marinello. “If thieves can get into the Louvre, it demonstrates how vulnerable our institutions have become. This is a difficult time to be a museum.”

The robbery of the objects – featuring jewelry pieces made up of eight sapphires and 631 diamonds, the crown of a historical figure containing thousands of diamonds and a hugely valuable diadem once possessed by Napoleon III’s wife that the thieves left by the roadside on their way out – has naturally drawn comparisons with the 1911 theft of the famous painting from the Louvre, carried out by the worker Vincenzo Peruggia.

Better comparisons 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 same year, the recent heist of a valuable item from Berlin’s Bode Museum or even a series of robberies of sports memorabilia from US mining museums.

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

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

“They are too well-known, particularly given the cultural authorities has published photos of the pieces. Even a private collector or an auction house would want to see paperwork confirming legal possession before touching such striking pieces.”

In the previous years, museums were often hesitant to announce publicly about the disappearance of famous art pieces and would stay silent out of embarrassment. These days, as art thefts are more reported on, the keeping and sale of stolen art is risky business for any criminal.

“If you steal a Picasso, it has to stay complete or it becomes valueless, and you have to conceive of a plan to conceal it, perhaps by passing it around difficult criminal actors,” said Marinello. “And you’re constantly exposed to the risk of an accomplice informing authorities to collect a reward.”

For similar reasons, an art detective said it was vanishingly unlikely that the theft 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 are apprehended, you end up in prison. You can't display it to your acquaintances, you cannot leave it to your children.”

Altering taken items by dismantling or reshaping does reduce the value. When it comes to gems, it also comes with significant danger because contemporary cutting techniques give gems a bigger and brighter surface area, and antique-cut stones would either attract notice or reduce value for a coverup.

Crucially, however, dismantling or re-cutting removes the evidence of the crime. “I suspect that the robbers will try to bring the items to places with gem knowledge like Israel, India or even as close as Antwerp, and locate an expert to cut out the stones,” said Marinello.

The robbery at the Louvre has already brought up concerns about security measures at the institution, with a leaked state auditor report expected to be released next month pointing out “significant” and “persistent” slow progress in modernizing equipment and observing that surveillance were missing in many rooms. But security experts say showing valuable objects in historic buildings with a constant flow of visitors comes with dangers that are not possible to eliminate completely.

“Older structures are more difficult to secure,” said an art crime professor. “Many of them have nice big street-facing windows that makes it easy for criminals to escape, and there may be preservation laws in place that mean you are unable to install them with secure windows.”

The most solid protective measures for buildings should be designed “as a stronghold”, said a security advisor. “It should include multiple levels to deter attackers.”

Modern buildings are equipped with advanced surveillance systems or integrated vibration sensors that alert about a smashed window in real time, but historic institutions may be hesitant to alter their exteriors. Laser scanners can be difficult to install to decorated surfaces. Motion and sound detectors may also have to be disabled during the day as hordes of visitors walk through a museum.

The timing of the Louvre raid, which occurred between morning hours in Paris, was typical of modern robberies, Stürmann said. “There’s a good reason why robberies tend to happen at either opening or closing times. It’s often when guards change their shifts and prior to the museum is crowded who actually act as extra protection.”

Technological progress may have thrown up new gadgets that can raise the alarm more rapidly and effectively, but it has also given thieves new methods with which to circumvent security measures. In the city, the robbers accessed the museum’s first-floor window with a mobile equipment and cut through a glass pane with a battery-powered disc cutter.

An author said the conversation in the country about the historic building had primarily centered on visitor management in the past decade, and not as much on security.

The institution has an in-house brigade of about 50 permanent firefighters, but their mission is mainly to protect the collection from blazes and water damage. “There is no rapid-response unit,” Sciolino said. “In the end, the safety of the Louvre all depends on political will and funding, and currently the nation lacks sufficient resources.”