Austrian police have launched a manhunt for two suspects over the alleged theft of a 200-carat platinum necklace encrusted with 673 diamonds from the Museum of Applied Arts (MAK) in Vienna.
The necklace, reportedly once owned by Queen Nazli of Egypt, was on loan to the museum as part of an exhibition featuring works associated with French luxury jewellery house, Van Cleef & Arpels.
Police said the suspects entered the museum after purchasing tickets and allegedly smashed a glass display case with a hammer during opening hours on Thursday afternoon before taking the necklace.
“The perpetrators fled with the jewellery in an unknown direction,” police said in an appeal for information.
The suspects were captured by the museum’s security cameras, and police have released images to the public to assist in identifying and locating them.
Officers also searched parts of central Vienna and deployed a tracking dog as part of efforts to trace the suspects.
Austrian newspaper, Kronen Zeitung, reported that investigators were considering the possibility that the theft was carried out as a contract job for a criminal gang.
The necklace had been on display at the MAK since June as part of an exhibition comprising more than 300 works associated with Van Cleef & Arpels.
The museum said no one was injured in the incident, although several visitors were reportedly in the exhibition room at the time of the theft.
Museum records indicate that the necklace once belonged to Queen Consort Nazli of Egypt, who reportedly wore it at the 1939 wedding of her daughter, Princess Fawzia, to Iran’s then Crown Prince Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who later became shah.
The piece was sold at a Sotheby’s auction in New York in 2015 for 4.3 million dollars.
The MAK said the exhibition featured about 200 unique and rarely seen objects from its collection, as well as pieces from the heritage collection of Van Cleef & Arpels, covering about 120 years of the jewellery house’s history.
Following the theft, a guided tour scheduled for Friday afternoon was cancelled and the exhibition was temporarily closed. The exhibition is scheduled to run until Sept. 27.
The incident comes amid a series of high-profile robberies targeting museums and cultural institutions across Europe.
In Spain, thieves reportedly raided the Treasure of Villena, a collection of Bronze Age gold artefacts regarded as one of Europe’s most significant prehistoric hoards.
Earlier this month, four works by 15th-century Renaissance painter, Antonello da Messina, were reportedly stolen from a museum in the Sicilian city of Messina.
Italian police 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 were becoming increasingly violent, with criminals using weapons and heavy tools, including sledgehammers, axes and explosives, to target valuable cultural objects.
