Two men bought tickets to enter Vienna’s Museum of Applied Arts (MAK) before smashing a display case, grabbing a 200-carat platinum and diamond necklace and walking away, police said Friday.
Austrian media said the Van Cleef and Arpels necklace, with 673 precious stones, was worth several million dollars. It is the latest in a series of high-profile heists to hit European museums, CBS News reported.
Police said the two men did not wear masks, paid to enter the museum and were clearly seen on surveillance cameras.
They “smashed a glass display case” with a hammer before “fleeing with the jewelry in an unknown direction,” said a police statement.
The MAK museum confirmed the theft but said it would not comment while the investigation went ahead.
The necklace had been part of an exhibition devoted to the French designers Van Cleef and Arpels. Some 500 pieces had been on display since June. The exhibition was to end on September 27 but has been closed following the theft.
It was designed for the former Egyptian royal family, and was worn by Queen Nazli in 1939 for the marriage of her daughter Fawzia to the future Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.
On its website, Van Cleef and Arpels called the stolen piece a “triumph of white jewelry.” The French company did not immediately comment on the theft.
European museums have been hit by a series of spectacular thefts since thieves in October broke into the Louvre museum in Paris in broad daylight, escaping in less than eight minutes with jewelry worth $102 million. The suspected thieves have been arrested and charged, but none of the jewels have been recovered except for a crown that was dropped as the group escaped.
Thieves on Thursday raided the Treasure of Villena — one of the greatest Bronze Age gold collections — at a museum in the Spanish city of Villena, taking most of the 50-plus mainly gold bracelets, bowls, bottles and other items on display.
Four works “of extraordinary value” by Renaissance artist Antonello da Messina were stolen from a museum in Sicily, Italy’s culture ministry said Sunday.
Two days earlier, Italian police said they had recovered paintings by Renoir, Cezanne and Matisse worth over $10.4 million that were stolen from the Magnani-Rocca Foundation museum near Parma. The artworks were stolen in less than three minutes, local media reported.
Last month, burglars stole millions of dollars worth of jewelry from the museum of French luxury glassmaker Lalique in a daring early morning raid.
Last October, a woman was arrested and charged over the theft of gold from the Natural History Museum in Paris.
In September 2025, thieves snatched three porcelain works worth millions of dollars and classed as national treasures in a heist at the Adrien Dubouche National Museum in Limoges in central France.
