Austrian police are searching for two men accused of stealing a 200-carat platinum necklace set with 673 diamonds from a Vienna museum. The historic piece, once owned by Egyptian royalty, was on loan to the Museum of Applied Arts (MAK) and was snatched during opening hours on Thursday afternoon.
Authorities released security camera images of the unmasked suspects, who bought tickets to the exhibition before shattering a glass display case with a hammer and fleeing with the necklace. The heist occurred amid a series of spectacular smash-and-grab thefts targeting European cultural institutions.
Police Appeal and Investigation
In a public appeal for information, police stated: “The perpetrators fled with the jewellery in an unknown direction.” Officers swept through the city centre and deployed a tracking dog to locate the suspects. According to the Kronen newspaper, investigators believe the men were likely carrying out a “contract job” on behalf of a criminal gang.
The MAK confirmed that the piece was stolen from a jewellery exhibition that had been open since June, featuring over 300 works by the French designers Van Cleef & Arpels. No injuries were reported, though several witnesses were present in the room at the time of the theft.
Historical Significance of the Necklace
Exhibition documentation revealed that the necklace belonged to Queen Consort Nazli of Egypt, who wore it at the 1939 wedding of her daughter Fawzia to Iran’s then crown prince, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, later the shah. The necklace was sold by Sotheby’s in New York in 2015 for $4.3 million.
The MAK noted that the exhibition brought together about 200 “unique and rarely seen objects” from its own collection and pieces spanning the 120-year history of the Parisian jewellery house, drawn from the Van Cleef & Arpels patrimonial collection.
Exhibition Closed and Broader Theft Wave
A guided tour scheduled for Friday afternoon was listed as “cancelled” on the museum’s website, and the exhibition, originally set to end on 27 September, was temporarily closed. The museum has not yet announced a reopening date.
European museums have faced a wave of high-profile heists. Last October, thieves broke into the Louvre museum in Paris during the day and escaped within minutes with crown jewels worth €88 million. On Thursday in Spain, thieves raided the Treasure of Villena, a collection of Bronze Age gold artefacts described as one of Europe’s most important prehistoric hoards.
This month, four major works by the 15th-century Renaissance master Antonello da Messina were stolen during a national holiday from a museum in the Sicilian port city of Messina. Two days earlier, Italian police recovered three paintings by Paul Cézanne, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and Henri Matisse that were taken this year from a private museum near Parma.
A Europol report this month found that robberies at European museums are becoming increasingly violent, with thieves sometimes brandishing guns, assaulting staff, and using sledgehammers, axes, and even explosives to reach targeted loot. The Vienna investigation remains ongoing as police continue to search for the two suspects and the stolen necklace.
