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Entering the planet's most popular museum in broad daylight, grabbing eight pieces of priceless Napoleonic jewellery and vanishing into Paris traffic on humble scooters may seem like the most audacious of crimes, executed for global fame and ensuing Hollywood film treatments.

Specialists who study patterns in international art crime, however, see the recent robbery at the Louvre as a more practical matter: the latest in a series of smash-and-grab thefts centered more on the material value of valuable gems or materials than the historical importance, continuing a trend that has emerged over the last decade in Europe, Britain and the US. The location, they suggest, would have been of lesser importance to the thieves.

“You may ask why thieves who want to steal valuable jewellery are breaking into a world-famous 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 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, meanwhile, look more exposed, in part because of the in-built reason of being accessible institutions in older structures, and partly the current economic climate in many developed nations.

“Since Covid, governments 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 – including necklaces made up of eight sapphires and hundreds of gems, the tiara of Empress Eugénie containing thousands of diamonds and a hugely valuable diadem once owned by Napoleon III’s wife that the thieves left by the roadside on their way out – has naturally been compared with the historical theft of the famous painting from the Louvre, performed by the Italian handyman the thief.

Better comparisons may be the recent theft of valuables from Dresden’s Green Vault Museum worth over millions, the theft of a multi-million pound gold toilet from a UK landmark the same year, the recent heist of a large gold coin from a European museum or even a spate of robberies of collector items from US mining museums.

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

If the artefacts were to stay whole, experts say, the thieves would struggle to find a buyer. “There’s no way to sell something as immediately identifiable as the Louvre’s jewels on the legal marketplace”, said an art crime researcher of the Association for Research into Crimes against Art.

“They are too well-known, particularly given the Ministry of Culture has published photos of the items. Even a private collector or an sales venue would want to see paperwork establishing legal possession before handling such remarkable pieces.”

In the past, institutions were often hesitant to go public about the loss of well-known art pieces and would remain quiet out of shame. These days, as cultural robberies are more reported on, the keeping and selling of stolen art is dangerous for any lawbreaker.

“Taking a Picasso, it has to stay complete or it becomes valueless, and you have to conceive of a plan to keep it in hiding, perhaps by passing it around difficult criminal actors,” said Marinello. “There's ongoing risk to the risk of an accomplice informing authorities to cash in a reward.”

For similar reasons, an investigator said it was vanishingly unlikely that the robbery had been ordered. “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 acquire these, if you are apprehended, you go to jail. You cannot show it to your friends, you cannot leave it to your family.”

Modifying taken items by melting down or reshaping does lower the worth. When it comes to gems, it also comes with significant danger because modern methods give gems a larger and lighter surface area, and antique-cut stones would either attract notice or barter the price down for a concealment.

Importantly, however, dismantling or re-cutting eliminates the proof of the theft. “My guess is that the Louvre thieves will try to take the stolen goods to places with gem knowledge like a country, India or even as close as Antwerp, and locate an expert to cut out the gems,” said Marinello.

The robbery at the Louvre has already raised questions about security measures at the institution, with a unauthorized official review expected to be released next month pointing out “significant” and “persistent” delays in updating equipment and observing that surveillance were missing in many rooms. But security experts say displaying valuable objects in historic buildings with a constant flow of guests comes with dangers that are not possible to eliminate completely.

“Older structures are much harder to protect,” said Erin Thompson. “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 can’t fit them with secure windows.”

The most solid security systems for buildings should be designed “as a stronghold”, said Peter Stürmann. “It should include multiple levels to deter attackers.”

Modern buildings are fitted with advanced external CCTV cameras or in-built seismic detectors that alert about a broken glass in immediately, but old museums may be reluctant to uglify 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 timing of the Louvre raid, which took place between 9.30am and 9.40am local time, was common of modern robberies, Stürmann said. “There’s a good reason why robberies tend to happen at either opening or closing times. Frequently when guards rotate and prior to the museum is full of visitors who actually act as extra protection.”

Technological progress may have introduced new devices that can notify more rapidly and efficiently, but it has also provided thieves new methods with which to bypass protections. In the city, the thieves accessed the museum’s upper level with a vehicle-mounted ladder and cut through a window with a electric tool.

Elaine Sciolino said the discussion in the country about the 232-year-old building had primarily focused on crowd control in the past decade, and not as much on security.

The museum has an on-site team of about 50 permanent firefighters, but their mission is mostly to safeguard the artworks from fires and flooding. “There is no rapid-response unit,” Sciolino said. “Ultimately, the safety of the Louvre all comes down to political will and funding, and currently France lacks sufficient money.”