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Entering the planet's most popular art institution in broad daylight, grabbing eight pieces of priceless 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.

Experts who study patterns in international art crime, however, see the recent robbery at the Louvre as something more prosaic: the latest in a series of quick-hit thefts centered more on the monetary worth of precious stones or metals than the historical importance, continuing a pattern that has appeared over the last decade in Germany, the UK and the US. The location, they suggest, would have been of lesser importance to the thieves.

“One might wonder why criminals who want to take valuable jewellery are entering a globally renowned museum rather than a Cartier store,” said Christopher A Marinello. “The answer is simple: it’s because these days a high-end boutique is better protected.”

A spate of aggressive retail store thefts mean that many stores have strengthened their protection in the past few years, with armed guards on their locations and wares no longer shown overnight. Museums, meanwhile, look vulnerable, partly because of the in-built factor of being public-facing institutions in older structures, and also the financial situation in many western countries.

“Since Covid, authorities across the world have cut back on law enforcement and the culture sector,” noted Marinello. “If thieves can get into the Louvre, it demonstrates how at risk our museums have become. This is a difficult time to be a museum.”

The theft of the objects – featuring necklaces made up of precious stones and 631 diamonds, the tiara of Empress Eugénie featuring thousands of diamonds and a hugely valuable diadem once possessed by a royal that the robbers dropped by the street on their way out – has naturally been compared with the historical theft of the famous painting from the same museum, carried out by the Italian handyman the thief.

Better comparisons may be the 2019 burglary of valuables from Dresden’s Green Vault Museum worth over €113m, the taking of a £4.75m gold toilet from Blenheim Palace the that year, the recent heist of a valuable item from Berlin’s Bode Museum or even a spate of robberies of sports memorabilia from US mining museums.

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

If the artefacts were to remain intact, experts say, the thieves would struggle to find a buyer. “There’s no way to trade something as recognizable as the museum's gems on the legal marketplace”, said an art crime researcher of the a relevant organization.

“They would be immediately recognised, particularly given the cultural authorities has published photos of the pieces. Even a individual buyer or an sales venue would want to see paperwork confirming proper ownership before touching such striking pieces.”

In the previous years, institutions were often reluctant to announce publicly about the loss of famous art pieces and would remain quiet out of shame. These days, as cultural robberies are more reported on, the keeping and selling of taken items is dangerous for any criminal.

“If you steal a famous painting, it has to remain intact or it becomes valueless, and you have to devise a scheme to keep it in hiding, maybe by moving it among dangerous individuals,” noted Marinello. “There's ongoing risk to the risk of an accomplice telling the police to cash in 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 films,” he said. “No one would handle these items. It's global news and in all the media. If you buy this, if you get caught, you go to jail. You can't display it to your friends, you cannot leave it to your family.”

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

Importantly, however, dismantling or re-cutting removes the proof of the theft. “My guess is that the robbers will try to take the items to locations with diamond expertise like a country, another nation or even as nearby as Antwerp, and locate an expert to remove the gems,” suggested Marinello.

The heist at the Louvre has already raised questions about protective steps at the institution, with a unauthorized state auditor report expected to be released next month criticising “considerable” and “persistent” delays in modernizing equipment and observing that surveillance were lacking in multiple areas. But specialists say displaying precious items in older structures with a constant flow of guests comes with dangers that are impossible to eliminate completely.

“Older structures are more difficult to secure,” explained Erin Thompson. “Many of them have large accessible windows that allows for criminals 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 structures should be conceptualised “as a stronghold”, said Peter Stürmann. “There should be multiple levels to repel attackers.”

Contemporary structures are fitted with state-of-the-art external CCTV cameras or in-built seismic detectors that alert about a broken glass in real time, but old museums may be reluctant to uglify their exteriors. Detection devices can be hard to fit to decorated surfaces. Motion and sound detectors may also have to be turned off during the daytime as crowds stomp through a museum.

The timing of the Louvre raid, which occurred between 9.30am and 9.40am local time, was typical of recent thefts, Stürmann said. “It's logical why thefts tend to happen at either opening or closing times. Frequently when security rotate and before the museum is crowded who actually act as extra protection.”

Technological progress may have introduced new gadgets that can raise the alarm more rapidly and effectively, but it has also given robbers new methods with which to circumvent security measures. In Paris, the thieves accessed the museum’s upper level with a vehicle-mounted ladder and cut through a glass pane with a electric tool.

Elaine Sciolino said the conversation in France about the 232-year-old building had mostly centered on crowd control in the past decade, and not as much on protection.

The institution has an in-house brigade of about 50 permanent emergency personnel, but their purpose is mainly to protect the artworks from fires and water damage. “There isn't a rapid-response unit,” Sciolino said. “Ultimately, the security of the Louvre all comes down to political will and funding, and currently the nation lacks sufficient resources.”