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A necklace of 673 diamonds that belonged to the Queen of Egypt was stolen in Vienna.
A platinum necklace set with 673 diamonds and weighing approximately 200 carats has been stolen from the Museum of Applied Arts (MAK) in Vienna during opening hours. The jewel, which belonged to Queen Consort Nazli of Egypt and was on display as part of an exhibition dedicated to Van Cleef & Arpels' high jewelry, was stolen on Thursday afternoon in a heist carried out in mere moments.
Austrian police are searching for two men who entered the museum as visitors and were captured on security cameras. The suspects, who were not wearing masks, used a hammer to smash the display case protecting the necklace and fled with the piece in front of several visitors. No one was injured.
Following the robbery, officers launched a search operation in central Vienna, including the use of a specialized tracking dog. Police have released images of the two suspects and are working on the theory that the robbery may have been commissioned by a criminal organization.
The necklace was part of an exhibition that opened in June at the MAK, dedicated to more than 300 creations by the historic French firm Van Cleef & Arpels. The piece also holds significant historical value. According to the exhibition's documentation, it belonged to Nazli Sabri, the last queen consort of Egypt, who wore it in 1939 during the wedding of her daughter Fawzia to Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, then Crown Prince of Iran and future Shah.
The jewel came onto the market decades later. In 2015, it was auctioned by Sotheby's in New York and fetched $4.3 million, a figure that gives an idea of its extraordinary economic value, although it hardly reflects its historical and symbolic significance.
The director general of the MAK, Lilli Hollein, acknowledged that the institution had been deeply shocked by the news of the theft. The museum, in collaboration with Van Cleef & Arpels, had developed a specific security plan for the exhibition and had reviewed its protocols before its opening, particularly in light of the break-ins suffered by major European cultural institutions in recent years.
According to Hollein, staff acted according to established procedures and remained calm during the incident. The museum has emphasized that all security measures had been specifically reviewed and prepared for the exhibition.
A string of thefts that worries European museums
The Vienna heist comes at a particularly delicate time for the security of European cultural heritage. On the same Thursday, another European museum suffered a major theft: in Spain, part of the Villena Treasure, one of the most important collections of Bronze Age goldwork in Europe, was stolen.
The wave of attacks against cultural institutions has intensified in recent months. In Italy, four paintings by the Renaissance master Antonello da Messina were stolen this August from a museum in the Sicilian city of Messina. Days earlier, Italian police had recovered three works by Paul Cézanne, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and Henri Matisse that had been stolen months before from a private museum near Parma.
These incidents add to the spectacular robbery perpetrated last October at the Louvre in Paris, where a group of criminals stole several historical jewels in a daylight robbery.
A recent Europol report has warned of the increasing violence used in robberies of European museums. Criminals are increasingly resorting to hammers, sledgehammers, axes, and explosives to gain access to specific artifacts, while in some cases they even use firearms or physically assault staff.
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