Austrian police are hunting two men accused of stealing a 200-carat platinum necklace set with 673 diamonds, on loan to a Vienna museum and once owned by Egyptian royalty.
According to a statement from the Museum of Applied Arts (MAK), the theft occurred on Thursday afternoon (local time) during opening hours. The two unmasked suspects bought tickets to the exhibition, then used a hammer to smash the display case and removed the historic artifact. Police have released images of the suspects captured by security cameras.
The police statement said: “The perpetrators fled with the jewelry in an unknown direction.” Officers fanned out across the city center and deployed sniffer dogs in the search. The Kronen newspaper reported that investigators believe the two may have been carrying out a “contract job” for a criminal gang.
MAK said the necklace was stolen from a jewelry exhibition running since June, featuring over 300 works by the French designer Van Cleef & Arpels. No one was injured, though there were some witnesses at the scene at the time of the incident.
According to exhibition documents, the necklace once belonged to Queen Nazli of Egypt, who wore it at the 1939 wedding of her daughter, Princess Fawzia, to the then Crown Prince of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, later Shah. The necklace was auctioned by Sotheby’s in New York in 2015 for $4.3 million.
MAK said the exhibition brings together about 200 “unique and rare pieces” from the museum’s own collection, as well as works spanning 120 years of the Parisian jeweler’s history. A guided tour scheduled for Friday afternoon was canceled, and the exhibition, which was due to end on September 27, has been temporarily closed.
The theft in Vienna comes amid a spate of major heists at European museums. Last month, the Louvre in Paris was broken into in broad daylight, with thieves making off with jewels worth €88 million in a matter of minutes. In Spain, robbers stole the Treasure of Villena, a collection of Bronze Age gold artifacts considered among the most important prehistoric treasures in Europe. Earlier this month, four key works by Renaissance master Antonello da Messina were also stolen during a national holiday at a museum in Messina, Sicily.
According to a Europol report this month, robberies at European museums have become increasingly violent, with thieves often carrying guns, attacking staff, and using sledgehammers, axes, and even explosives to break through doors to reach their targets.
