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Entering the planet's most popular art institution in the middle of the day, taking eight items of invaluable Napoleonic jewellery and vanishing into the city traffic on humble scooters may seem like the most audacious of crimes, carried out for international notoriety and subsequent Hollywood film treatments.

Experts who study patterns in international art crime, however, see Sunday morning’s heist at the Louvre as something more prosaic: the most recent in a series of quick-hit thefts centered more on the monetary worth of valuable gems or metals than the historical importance, continuing a pattern that has emerged over the last ten years in Europe, Britain and the US. The venue, they propose, would have been of secondary concern to the thieves.

“You may ask why criminals who want to steal 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 series of violent jewellery shop thefts mean that many stores have beefed up their protection in the past few years, with armed guards on their locations and wares no longer kept on display overnight. Museums, on the other hand, look more exposed, in part because of the inherent factor of being accessible institutions in historic buildings, and partly the current economic climate in many developed nations.

“Since Covid, governments across the world have cut back on police and the arts funding,” said Marinello. “With criminals entering the Louvre, it shows how vulnerable our museums have become. This is a difficult time to be a museum.”

The theft of the items – featuring necklaces made up of eight sapphires 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 robbers left by the roadside on their way out – has inevitably been compared with the 1911 theft of the Mona Lisa from the same museum, performed by the worker Vincenzo Peruggia.

More relevant comparisons may be the 2019 theft of jewellery from a German institution worth over €113m, the taking of a multi-million pound gold toilet from a UK landmark the same year, the 2017 heist of a large gold coin from a European museum or even a series of thefts of sports memorabilia from US mining museums.

“There’s a simple pattern here,” said Marinello. “Break in, take items, and dismantle them as rapidly as possible.”

If the items were to remain intact, experts say, the criminals would struggle to sell them. “There’s no way to trade something as immediately identifiable as the museum's gems on the licit market”, said an art crime researcher of the a relevant organization.

“They would be immediately recognised, especially given the Ministry of Culture has released images of the pieces. Even a private collector 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 go public about the loss of well-known works of art and would remain quiet out of shame. Now, as art thefts are more widely publicised, the keeping and sale of taken items is dangerous for any criminal.

“Taking a famous painting, it has to remain intact or it becomes valueless, and you have to devise a scheme to conceal it, perhaps by passing it around difficult criminal actors,” said Marinello. “There's ongoing risk to the risk of an partner informing authorities to collect a ransom.”

For similar reasons, an art detective said it was vanishingly unlikely that the theft had been commissioned. “Commissioned theft is something from Hollywood movies,” he said. “Nobody would touch this. It’s all around the world and in all the newspapers. If you buy this, if you are apprehended, you end up in prison. You can't display it to your friends, you cannot bequeath it to your children.”

Modifying stolen works by dismantling or reshaping does reduce the worth. When it comes to gems, it also comes with significant danger because contemporary cutting techniques give stones a bigger and lighter appearance, and antique-cut stones would either draw unwanted attention or reduce value for a coverup.

Importantly, however, melting down or reshaping removes the proof of the theft. “I suspect that the robbers will try to bring the items to places with diamond expertise like a country, India or even as nearby as a city, and find someone to remove the gems,” suggested Marinello.

The heist at the Louvre has already brought up concerns about security measures at the museum, with a unauthorized state auditor report expected to be published soon pointing out “significant” and “persistent” delays in updating systems and observing that surveillance were lacking in multiple areas. But specialists say displaying valuable objects in historic buildings with a steady stream of guests comes with dangers that are not possible to eliminate completely.

“Older structures are more difficult to protect,” explained 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 building protection statutes in place that mean you are unable to install them with proper bulletproof glass.”

The best security systems for buildings should be designed “as a stronghold”, said a security advisor. “It should include multiple levels to deter intruders.”

Modern buildings are fitted with advanced external CCTV cameras or integrated vibration sensors that alert about a broken glass in real time, but historic institutions may be hesitant to alter their exteriors. Laser scanners can be difficult to install to stuccoed ceilings. Motion and sound detectors may also have to be turned off during the daytime as hordes of visitors walk through a museum.

The timing of the robbery, which took place between morning hours local time, was common of recent thefts, Stürmann said. “It's logical why thefts tend to happen at either opening or closing times. Frequently when security change their shifts and before the museum is full of visitors 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 circumvent protections. In Paris, the thieves accessed the museum’s first-floor window with a vehicle-mounted ladder and cut through a glass pane with a battery-powered disc cutter.

An author said the discussion in France about the historic structure had mostly centered on visitor management in the past decade, and not as much on protection.

The institution has an on-site team of about fifty permanent emergency personnel, but their purpose is mostly to protect the artworks from blazes and flooding. “There isn't a rapid-response unit,” Sciolino said. “Ultimately, the safety of the Louvre all comes down to political will and funding, and at present the nation lacks sufficient resources.”