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Breaking into the world’s most-visited art institution in broad daylight, grabbing 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 movie adaptations.

Specialists who study 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 valuable gems or materials than the artifacts’ significance, perpetuating a pattern that has appeared over the last decade in Europe, Britain and the US. The venue, they suggest, would have been of lesser importance to the thieves.

“You may ask why thieves who want to steal expensive jewellery are entering a world-famous museum rather than a Cartier store,” stated Christopher A Marinello. “It's straightforward: it’s because these days a Cartier store is more secure.”

A spate of violent retail store thefts indicate that many stores have beefed up their protection in recent years, with security personnel on their locations and wares no longer shown overnight. Museums, on the other hand, look vulnerable, partly because of the in-built factor of being public-facing institutions in older structures, and also the financial situation in many developed nations.

“After the pandemic, governments across the globe have cut back on police and the arts funding,” said Marinello. “If thieves can get into the Louvre, it shows how at risk our institutions have become. This is a difficult time to be a museum.”

The theft of the objects – featuring jewelry pieces made up of precious stones and 631 diamonds, the crown of a historical figure featuring nearly 2,000 diamonds and a extremely expensive crown once possessed by a royal that the robbers left by the street on their way out – has naturally drawn comparisons with the 1911 theft of the famous painting from the same museum, performed by the worker Vincenzo Peruggia.

More relevant comparisons may be the recent theft of valuables from Dresden’s Green Vault Museum worth over €113m, the taking of a £4.75m gold toilet from a UK landmark the same year, the recent robbery of a valuable item from Berlin’s Bode Museum or even a spate of thefts of sports memorabilia from US mining museums.

“There’s a simple pattern here,” said Marinello. “Smash, grab, and melt it down as quickly as possible.”

If the items were to remain intact, specialists say, the criminals would struggle to sell them. “There’s no way to trade something as recognizable as the Louvre’s jewels on the licit market”, commented an art crime researcher 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 sales venue would want to see paperwork confirming proper ownership before touching such remarkable pieces.”

In the past, institutions were often hesitant to announce publicly about the loss of famous art pieces and would remain quiet out of embarrassment. Now, as art thefts are more widely publicised, the keeping and sale of stolen art is risky business for any criminal.

“If you steal a Picasso, it has to remain intact or it becomes worthless, and you have to conceive of a scheme to conceal it, perhaps by passing it around dangerous individuals,” said Marinello. “There's ongoing risk to the risk of an partner telling the police to collect a ransom.”

For similar reasons, an investigator 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 global news and in all the media. If you acquire these, if you get caught, you end up in prison. You cannot show it to your acquaintances, you cannot leave it to your children.”

Altering taken items by melting down or re-cutting does lower the value. When it comes to diamonds, it also comes with significant danger because contemporary methods give stones a larger and lighter appearance, and older-style stones would either draw unwanted attention or barter the price down for a coverup.

Importantly, however, melting down or re-cutting removes the evidence 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 remove the gems,” suggested Marinello.

The heist at the Louvre has already raised questions about protective steps at the institution, with a leaked state auditor report expected to be published next month pointing out “considerable” and “ongoing” delays in modernizing equipment and observing that security cameras were missing in many rooms. But security experts say showing precious items in older structures with a steady stream of visitors comes with risks that are not possible to eliminate completely.

“Older structures are more difficult to protect,” said an art crime professor. “They often have large accessible windows that makes it easy for criminals to get away, and there may be building protection statutes in place that mean you are unable to install them with secure windows.”

The most solid protective measures for structures should be conceptualised “like a fortress”, said Peter Stürmann. “It should include multiple levels to repel intruders.”

Contemporary structures are equipped with state-of-the-art surveillance systems or integrated seismic detectors that raise alarm about a broken glass in real time, but old museums may be reluctant to alter their exteriors. Detection devices can be hard to install to stuccoed ceilings. Sensors may also have to be turned off during the day as crowds walk through a museum.

The schedule of the robbery, which took place between 9.30am and 9.40am local time, was typical of modern robberies, Stürmann said. “There’s a good reason why robberies tend to happen at either start or end of day. Frequently when guards change their shifts and before the museum is crowded who actually act as additional security staff.”

Technological progress may have thrown up new gadgets that can notify more rapidly and efficiently, but it has also provided thieves new methods with which to bypass protections. In Paris, 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 232-year-old structure had mostly focused on visitor management in the past decade, and less on security.

The institution has an on-site brigade of about fifty full-time firefighters, but their purpose is mainly to safeguard the collection from blazes and flooding. “There isn't a rapid-response unit,” Sciolino said. “In the end, the safety of the Louvre all comes down to political will and funding, and at present France lacks sufficient resources.”