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Breaking into the planet's most popular art institution in broad daylight, taking eight pieces of priceless historical gems and disappearing into Paris traffic on simple scooters may seem like the boldest of crimes, carried out for international notoriety and subsequent movie adaptations.

Specialists who observe patterns in global cultural theft, however, see Sunday morning’s robbery at the Louvre as a more practical matter: the most recent in a string of quick-hit thefts focused more on the monetary worth of precious stones or materials than the artifacts’ significance, perpetuating a trend that has appeared over the last ten years in Germany, Britain and the US. The venue, they suggest, would have been of lesser importance to the criminals.

“You may ask why criminals who want to steal expensive jewellery are breaking into a globally renowned museum rather than a Cartier store,” said Christopher A Marinello. “The answer is simple: it’s because nowadays a high-end boutique is more secure.”

A series of violent retail store thefts mean that many stores have strengthened their protection in recent years, with armed guards on their premises and merchandise no longer shown overnight. Museums, meanwhile, look vulnerable, in part because of the inherent factor of being public-facing institutions in older structures, and also the current economic climate in many western countries.

“After the pandemic, authorities across the world have reduced spending on law enforcement and the arts funding,” said Marinello. “If thieves can get into the Louvre, it shows how at risk our museums have become. This is a horrible time to be a museum.”

The robbery of the objects – including necklaces made up of precious stones and hundreds of gems, the tiara of Empress Eugénie containing thousands of diamonds and a extremely expensive crown once owned by a royal that the thieves left by the street on their way out – has naturally drawn comparisons with the historical theft of the Mona Lisa from the Louvre, performed by the Italian handyman Vincenzo Peruggia.

More relevant comparisons may be the 2019 theft of valuables from a German institution worth over €113m, the taking of a £4.75m gold toilet from Blenheim Palace the same year, the recent heist of a large gold coin from a European museum or even a spate of robberies 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 criminals would find it hard to find a buyer. “It's impossible to sell something as recognizable as the museum's gems on the licit market”, said Lynda Albertson of the Association for Research into Crimes against Art.

“They would be immediately recognised, especially given the Ministry of Culture has released images of the pieces. Even a private collector or an auction house would want to see documentation confirming legal possession before handling such striking pieces.”

In the previous years, institutions were often hesitant to go public about the loss of well-known works of art and would remain quiet out of embarrassment. 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 Picasso, it has to stay complete or it becomes worthless, and you have to devise a scheme to keep it in hiding, perhaps by moving it among difficult criminal actors,” noted Marinello. “There's ongoing risk to the danger of an partner telling the police to cash in a ransom.”

For similar reasons, an investigator said it was vanishingly unlikely that the robbery 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 media. If you acquire these, if you are apprehended, you end up in prison. You cannot show it to your friends, you cannot leave it to your family.”

Modifying taken items by melting down or re-cutting does reduce the worth. When it comes to diamonds, it also comes with considerable risk because modern methods give gems a bigger and lighter appearance, and antique-cut stones would either attract notice or reduce value for a coverup.

Crucially, however, dismantling or reshaping eliminates the proof of the crime. “I suspect that the Louvre thieves will try to bring the stolen goods to places with gem knowledge like a country, another nation or even as close as Antwerp, and find someone to cut out the gems,” said Marinello.

The robbery at the Louvre has already raised questions about protective steps at the institution, with a leaked official review expected to be released next month pointing out “considerable” and “persistent” slow progress in updating systems and observing that security cameras were lacking in multiple areas. But security experts say displaying valuable objects in historic buildings with a steady stream of guests comes with risks that are impossible to eliminate completely.

“Older structures are much harder to protect,” said an art crime professor. “Many of them have large accessible windows that makes it easy for thieves to escape, and there may be preservation laws in place that mean you can’t fit them with proper bulletproof glass.”

The best security systems for buildings should be designed “like a fortress”, said Peter Stürmann. “There should be several layers to deter intruders.”

Modern buildings are equipped with state-of-the-art surveillance systems or integrated vibration sensors that raise alarm about a broken glass in real time, but old museums may be hesitant to alter their exteriors. Detection devices can be hard to install to stuccoed ceilings. Motion and sound detectors may also have to be turned off during the day as crowds stomp through a museum.

The timing of the Louvre raid, which took place between morning hours in Paris, was typical of recent thefts, Stürmann said. “It's logical why thefts tend to happen at either start or end of day. Frequently when guards rotate and before the museum is full of visitors who actually act as extra protection.”

Technological progress may have introduced new devices that can notify more quickly and effectively, but it has also given robbers new methods with which to bypass security measures. In the city, the thieves reached the museum’s first-floor window with a vehicle-mounted ladder and cut through a window with a electric tool.

Elaine Sciolino said the conversation in the country about the historic 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 full-time emergency personnel, but their mission is mainly to safeguard the artworks from blazes and flooding. “There is no rapid-response unit,” Sciolino said. “In the end, the safety of the Louvre all comes down to political will and money, and at present the nation simply has no resources.”