Austrian police are searching for two men who allegedly stole a 200-carat platinum necklace encrusted with 673 diamonds from a museum in Vienna.
The necklace, which was on loan to the Museum of Applied Arts (MAK), reportedly once belonged to Queen Nazli of Egypt. Police released images of the suspects captured by security cameras during the theft and appealed to members of the public for information that could help identify or locate them.
The two men reportedly entered the museum after buying tickets to the exhibition. During opening hours on Thursday afternoon, they allegedly smashed a glass display case with a hammer before taking the necklace and fleeing the scene. In an appeal for information, police said: “The perpetrators fled with the jewellery in an unknown direction.”
Officers searched parts of central Vienna and deployed a police tracking dog as they attempted to trace the suspects. Austrian newspaper Kronen reported that investigators believe the theft may have been carried out as a “contract job” for a criminal gang.
The stolen necklace was part of an exhibition that had been on display at the MAK since June. The exhibition featured more than 300 works associated with French luxury jewellery house Van Cleef & Arpels. No one was injured during the incident, although several visitors were reportedly present in the exhibition room when the theft occurred.
Museum documentation states that the necklace once belonged to Queen Consort Nazli of Egypt. She reportedly wore the piece during the 1939 wedding of her daughter, Princess Fawzia, to Iran’s then Crown Prince Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who later became shah. The necklace was sold by Sotheby’s in New York in 2015 for $4.3 million.
The MAK said the exhibition brought together about 200 “unique and rarely seen objects” from its own collection and pieces from the heritage collection of Van Cleef & Arpels, covering about 120 years of the jewellery house’s history.
Egyptian queen?s 673-diamond necklace stolen from museum
Following the theft, a guided tour scheduled for Friday afternoon was cancelled, while the exhibition was temporarily closed. The exhibition had been scheduled to run until September 27. The theft comes amid a series of high-profile robberies targeting European museums and cultural institutions.
In Spain on Thursday, thieves reportedly raided the Treasure of Villena, a collection of Bronze Age gold artefacts regarded as one of Europe’s most important prehistoric hoards. Earlier this month, four significant works by 15th-century Renaissance painter Antonello da Messina were stolen from a museum in the Sicilian city of Messina.
Italian police also recently recovered three paintings by Paul Cézanne, Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Henri Matisse that had been stolen from a private museum near Parma. A recent Europol report warned that museum robberies in Europe are becoming increasingly violent, with criminals using weapons and heavy tools, including sledgehammers, axes and explosives, to target valuable cultural objects.