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Entering the planet's most popular museum in broad daylight, 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 global fame and ensuing Hollywood film treatments.

Specialists who study patterns in global cultural theft, however, see Sunday morning’s robbery at the Louvre as something more prosaic: the most recent in a series of quick-hit thefts centered more on the material value of precious stones or metals than the historical importance, continuing a trend that has emerged over the last ten years in Germany, the UK and the US. The location, they suggest, would have been of secondary concern to the thieves.

“You may ask why criminals who want to steal valuable jewellery are entering a world-famous 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 spate of aggressive retail store thefts indicate that many stores have strengthened their protection in recent years, with armed guards on their locations and wares no longer kept on display overnight. Museums, on the other hand, look vulnerable, in part because of the in-built reason of being accessible institutions in historic buildings, and partly the financial situation in many western countries.

“After the pandemic, governments across the globe have reduced spending on law enforcement and the arts funding,” noted 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 objects – featuring jewelry pieces made up of precious stones and hundreds of gems, the tiara of Empress Eugénie featuring nearly 2,000 diamonds and a hugely valuable diadem once owned by Napoleon III’s wife that the robbers 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 worker Vincenzo Peruggia.

Better comparisons may be the recent theft of valuables from Dresden’s Green Vault Museum worth over millions, the theft of a £4.75m gold toilet from Blenheim Palace the that year, the 2017 robbery of a valuable item from a European museum or even a spate of thefts of sports memorabilia from American institutions.

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

If the artefacts were to remain intact, specialists say, the criminals would struggle to sell them. “There’s no way to trade something as recognizable as the museum's gems on the legal marketplace”, said Lynda Albertson of the Association for Research into Crimes against Art.

“They are too well-known, particularly given the cultural authorities has released images of the pieces. Even a private collector or an sales venue would want to see paperwork confirming proper ownership before handling such striking pieces.”

In the past, museums were often hesitant to announce publicly about the disappearance of well-known art pieces and would stay silent out of embarrassment. Now, as art thefts are more reported on, the keeping and selling of stolen art is dangerous for any criminal.

“Taking a famous painting, it has to remain intact or it becomes valueless, and you have to conceive of a plan to keep it in hiding, perhaps by moving it among difficult criminal actors,” said Marinello. “There's ongoing risk to the risk of an partner informing authorities to collect a reward.”

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. “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 can't display it to your acquaintances, you cannot bequeath it to your family.”

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

Importantly, however, dismantling or re-cutting removes the evidence of the theft. “I suspect that the Louvre thieves will try to bring the items to places with diamond expertise like Israel, another nation or even as nearby as Antwerp, and locate an expert to remove the gems,” said Marinello.

The heist at the Louvre has already raised questions about security measures at the institution, with a leaked state auditor report expected to be released next month criticising “considerable” and “ongoing” slow progress in updating systems and observing that security cameras were lacking in multiple areas. But security experts say showing precious items in older structures with a steady stream of visitors comes with dangers that are impossible to eliminate completely.

“Older structures are more difficult to secure,” said Erin Thompson. “They often have nice big street-facing windows that makes it easy for thieves to escape, and there may be preservation laws in place that mean you are unable to install them with secure windows.”

The most solid security systems for structures should be designed “like a fortress”, said Peter Stürmann. “There should be several layers to deter attackers.”

Modern buildings are equipped with advanced surveillance systems or in-built seismic detectors that raise alarm about a broken glass in immediately, but historic institutions may be reluctant to uglify their exteriors. Laser scanners can be hard to fit to stuccoed ceilings. Motion and sound detectors may also have to be disabled during the daytime as crowds walk through a museum.

The timing of the Louvre raid, which took place between morning hours local time, was common of modern robberies, Stürmann said. “There’s a good reason 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 additional security staff.”

Advances in technology may have introduced new devices that can notify more quickly and efficiently, but it has also provided thieves new methods with which to bypass security measures. In Paris, the thieves accessed the museum’s upper level with a vehicle-mounted ladder and breached a glass pane with a electric tool.

An author said the discussion in France about the 232-year-old structure had mostly centered on visitor management in recent years, and less on security.

The institution has an on-site team of about 50 permanent emergency personnel, but their mission is mainly to protect the artworks from fires and flooding. “There is no quick reaction team,” Sciolino said. “Ultimately, the safety of the Louvre all comes down to political will and funding, and at present the nation simply has no resources.”