Two men have stolen a historic platinum necklace encrusted with 673 diamonds from the Museum of Applied Arts (MAK) in Vienna, Austria, in a brazen smash-and-grab carried out in front of witnesses during opening hours. Austrian police have launched an international manhunt and released CCTV images of the suspects, who were unmasked, appealing to the public for information.
The thieves purchased tickets to the exhibition before using a hammer to shatter a glass display case and seizing the necklace on Thursday afternoon. One of the suspects was believed to be carrying a real firearm, though no one was injured. After fleeing the museum, the men headed in the direction of Vienna's Stadtpark, a public park just south of the building. Police deployed dog units across the city and the province of Lower Austria, while forensic experts examined evidence and security footage. Investigators are reported to believe the theft was a contract job carried out on behalf of an organised criminal gang.
The stolen piece is a 200-carat necklace designed by Parisian jewellery house Van Cleef & Arpels, described by the company as a "triumph of white jewellery." It once belonged to Queen Nazli, the queen consort of Egypt, who wore it at the 1939 wedding of her daughter Princess Fawzia to Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who would go on to become Shah of Iran. The necklace was auctioned by Sotheby's in New York in 2015, fetching $4.3 million. It was on loan to MAK as part of an exhibition spanning 120 years of Van Cleef & Arpels history, featuring over 300 works, which had been running since June. MAK's general director Lilli Hollein said the theft had "hit us hard" and that the museum had developed a dedicated security plan for the exhibition with Van Cleef & Arpels. The exhibition has since reopened, though a guided tour scheduled for Friday was cancelled.
The Vienna heist is the latest in a growing wave of high-profile thefts from European cultural institutions. Last October, a masked gang carried out a daylight raid on the Louvre in Paris, escaping with crown jewels worth €88 million. This month alone, four Renaissance paintings by 15th-century master Antonello da Messina were stolen from a museum in Messina, Sicily, and a significant trove of bronze age gold artefacts — the Treasure of Villena — was taken from a Spanish museum on the same day as the Vienna theft. Italian police separately announced the recovery of works by Cézanne, Renoir and Matisse stolen from a museum near Parma earlier this year.
The pattern has drawn the attention of European law enforcement. Europol, the EU's policing agency, warned this month that museum robberies are becoming increasingly aggressive, with thieves resorting to guns, sledgehammers and even explosives — a shift that may signal the involvement of new criminal networks. The escalating trend is raising urgent questions about the security of Europe's cultural heritage and the vulnerability of institutions that display priceless objects to the public.