Thieves steal 673-diamond royal necklace from Vienna museum

Two men stole a diamond necklace once owned by Queen Nazli of Egypt from the Museum of Applied Arts in Vienna on 27 August, smashing a display case during opening hours and fleeing on foot with a piece set with 673 diamonds.

The pair entered as paying visitors, shattered a glass case with a hammer in front of other guests and fled on foot towards the neighbouring Stadtpark, Austrian police said. One of the men carried a weapon that police described as probably real and said he displayed but did not use. No staff or visitors were hurt.

The necklace, designed by the French jeweller Van Cleef & Arpels, sold for $4.28 million at a Sotheby's auction in New York in 2015. The National reported it as the most valuable theft in Vienna since Benvenuto Cellini's gold-and-enamel Saliera was taken from the Kunsthistorisches Museum in 2003. Europol had warned days earlier that such robberies were becoming more aggressive.

How the theft unfolded

The two men bought standard admission tickets and walked through several exhibition halls before stopping at a glass case at around 2 p.m. local time. They smashed the case in front of multiple visitors, grabbed the necklace and left the building without being stopped. Investigators believe the pair knew exactly which item they meant to take.

Neither man wore a mask, and cameras inside the museum captured clear footage of both.

The MAK confirmed the theft and said no one had been hurt. Its general director, Lilli Hollein, said the museum had reviewed its security after thefts at other major museums, then worked with Van Cleef & Arpels on measures designed for this show.

The theft of a high-value piece of jewellery by Van Cleef & Arpels has hit us hard. Especially considering the incidents at major museums in recent years, we took this as an opportunity to thoroughly review our own security measures at the museum in general.

The museum stayed open after the theft, and the exhibition the necklace was taken from, Glanzstücke, reopened on 28 August with the emptied case obscured. It had been scheduled to run until 27 September.

A necklace made for a queen

Van Cleef & Arpels designed the necklace in 1939, when Nazli commissioned it, together with a matching tiara, for the wedding of her daughter, Princess Fawzia, to Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the Iranian crown prince who later became the country's last shah. Nazli wore the piece to the marriage, and the jeweller documented its design as an arrangement of geometric motifs.

The platinum piece holds 673 round and baguette-cut diamonds set in a sunburst pattern and totals more than 200 carats, according to police and the jeweller.

This monochrome necklace is an iconic example of the success of white diamond jewelry in the late 1930s

After the Egyptian monarchy fell, an impoverished Nazli sold the necklace at a Sotheby's auction in November 1975, at the age of 81. It stayed out of public view for four decades before resurfacing at Sotheby's in New York in 2015. In 2020 it went on show in Paris at the Muséum d'histoire naturelle.

One of many recent heists

On the same day as the Vienna heist, thieves in the Spanish town of Villena took most of one of Europe's greatest Bronze Age gold collections, leaving behind only a handful of its more than 50 pieces, its mayor told reporters.

We are totally devastated, I am still trembling

The pattern stretches back months. In October 2025 thieves entered the Louvre in Paris in daylight and left in under eight minutes with eight pieces from the French crown jewels, valued by prosecutors at about $102 million. Several people have since been arrested, none of the jewels have been recovered, and the museum's director resigned four months later after a run of separate problems.

Other institutions have both lost and recovered works. Four works by the Renaissance painter Antonello da Messina were stolen from a museum in Sicily in August, Italy's culture ministry said, and days earlier police recovered three paintings by Cézanne, Renoir and Matisse worth €9 million taken from a foundation near Parma. In July the Lalique Museum in eastern France was robbed of €4.5 million in jewellery.

A changing kind of crime

Europol, the European Union's law enforcement agency, warned in a report published in August that criminals are increasingly going after artefacts made of gold and precious stones, which can be melted down or broken up and sold without leaving a trace.

The agency's report, titled Changing Tactics, Changing Targets, said museum thefts had long been treated as a non-violent form of property crime built on reconnaissance and discreet execution. That is shifting, with brute force replacing guile and many robbers now drawn from other kinds of crime.

The search for the thieves

Vienna's Regional Criminal Investigations Office is leading a national and international search for the two suspects, and police have released photographs and descriptions as part of the manhunt. Both men were described as slim, roughly 170 to 175 centimetres tall, with dark hair and dark beards, and both wore black outer clothing and dark sneakers with white soles when they fled.

The Federal Criminal Police Office's cultural heritage investigation unit has joined the inquiry, and numerous officers were deployed across central Vienna in the immediate aftermath. The Austrian newspaper Kronen Zeitung reported that investigators are examining a possible link to an organised crime group, though authorities have not confirmed any such connection.

Van Cleef & Arpels, founded in Paris in 1906, did not immediately comment on the theft. The museum said it could not provide details while the investigation continued, though visitors could still see the rest of its collection.

The value in question

Sotheby's estimated the necklace at between $3.6 million and $4.6 million before the 2015 auction, where it sold for $4.28 million. Vienna police have put no figure on what it is worth now. Its ties to the Egyptian royal family have long lifted its price.

The 2003 theft it now surpasses involved Cellini's Saliera, a gold-and-enamel salt cellar taken from the Kunsthistorisches Museum and valued at €50 million; it was recovered three years later. Larger losses elsewhere include jewels insured for €116 million taken from Dresden's Green Vault in 2019, some recovered by German police in 2022, and a €3.75 million gold coin stolen from Berlin's Bode Museum in 2017 that investigators believe was melted down.

The Glanzstücke exhibition gathered around 500 objects, more than 300 from Van Cleef & Arpels and about 200 from the museum's own collection, and had been open since 10 June. The necklace shared its case with a set of earrings, a double-clip brooch and two decorative pieces.

What remains unclear

Police have said the pair's trail was lost at the Stadtpark beside the museum, but not whether the necklace is still intact or when they expect to make arrests. The exhibition it was taken from reopened on 28 August, and the rest of the museum has stayed open throughout.