Two men broke into a display case at Vienna’s Museum of Applied Arts (MAK) and stole a diamond necklace believed to have belonged to an Egyptian queen. The Van Cleef & Arpels jewel was sold for $4.3m at auction in 2015, but police have not revealed what it is worth now, German media reported.
The men entered the museum, known as the MAK, during opening hours at about 2pm on 27 August. They broke the glass case, took the necklace and fled before officers could catch them, according to Vienna police.
The theft occurred during Glanzstücke, an exhibition pairing more than 300 Van Cleef & Arpels creations with over 200 objects from the MAK collection. It opened in June and was scheduled to run until 27 September.
MAK said the rest of the building would remain open while the affected exhibition stayed closed. It declined to discuss the necklace or security arrangements because of the continuing investigation.
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Royal necklace of over 600 diamonds
The authorities described the stolen object only as a necklace. However, the police photograph and details from the exhibition led Austrian and German media to identify it as a Van Cleef & Arpels piece made for Queen Nazli of Egypt.
The platinum Art Deco necklace contains more than 600 round and baguette-cut diamonds weighing about 217 carats. Its sunburst design centres on a six-carat diamond, according to the Gemological Institute of America.
Queen Nazli commissioned the necklace and a matching tiara for the 1939 wedding of her daughter, Princess Fawzia, to Iran’s future shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. The necklace remained in a private collection for decades before fetching $4.3m at Sotheby’s New York in December 2015.
That sale price is a historical reference rather than a current police valuation. The necklace’s present market value has not been made public.
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The theft comes as European police warn that jewellery and precious metals are increasingly attractive targets for museums. Europol says that criminals can break apart, melt down or strip such objects of their stones, making them harder to trace and recover, Reuters reported.
