[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/GettyImages-1228526756.jpg?w=1024″]<\/p>\n
\n\tTwo men stole a diamond necklace worth millions of dollars from Vienna\u2019s Museum of Applied Arts (MAK) on Thursday, after entering the museum as ordinary visitors and smashing open a display case.<\/p>\n
\n\tThe unidentified men entered the MAK during opening hours and targeted the museum\u2019s current exhibition of jewelry by Van Cleef & Arpels, the Austrian newspaper\u00a0Kronen Zeitung<\/em> reported.\u00a0The men smashed a glass case, grabbed the necklace, and fled. No one was injured.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tPolice said on Friday that the men had bought tickets to the museum, were not wearing masks, and were captured clearly on surveillance cameras. They used a hammer to break the display case before escaping, according to\u00a0CBS News<\/em>.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tThe stolen piece is a platinum Van Cleef & Arpels necklace set with 673 stones totaling more than 200 carats. It was created for Egypt\u2019s royal family and worn by Queen Nazli in 1939 at the wedding of her daughter, Princess Fawzia, to Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, then crown prince of Iran and later the country\u2019s last shah. The necklace sold at Sotheby\u2019s New York\u00a0for $4.3 million in 2015.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tThe necklace was included in \u201cGlanzst\u00fccke,\u201d an exhibition pairing jewelry from Van Cleef & Arpels with objects from the MAK collection. The show includes roughly 500 objects, with more than 300 of them from the French jewelry house and more than 200 from the museum\u2019s holdings.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tThe exhibition, which opened in June and was scheduled to run through September 27, has been closed indefinitely following the theft. The MAK told\u00a0CBS<\/em>\u00a0it would not provide further details while the police investigation is underway.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tVienna police launched an extensive search for the suspects and were reviewing surveillance footage.\u00a0Kronen Zeitung<\/em>\u00a0reported that investigators suspect the theft may have been a targeted job commissioned by a criminal group based in the Balkans, though police have not publicly confirmed that theory.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tThe theft recalls one of Austria\u2019s most notorious museum heists. In 2003, Benvenuto Cellini\u2019s gold-and-enamel\u00a0Saliera<\/em>, then valued at roughly \u20ac50 million ($58 million), was stolen from Vienna\u2019s Kunsthistorisches Museum by a thief who climbed scaffolding and entered through a window. The work was recovered three years later.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tThe Vienna robbery also comes less than a year after the brazen theft of jewels from the Louvre in Paris. In October 2025, thieves broke into the museum\u2019s Galerie d\u2019Apollon and made off with eight pieces of the French crown jewels, including jewelry associated with Empress Eug\u00e9nie and Queen Marie-Am\u00e9lie. The haul was valued at roughly $102 million, though officials said the historical value of the objects far exceeded their market price.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n [analyse_source url=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/art-news\/news\/van-cleef-arpels-necklace-stolen-vienna-mak-museum-1234796217\/”]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/GettyImages-1228526756.jpg?w=1024″] Two men stole a diamond necklace worth millions of dollars from Vienna\u2019s Museum of Applied Arts (MAK) on Thursday, after entering the museum as ordinary visitors and smashing open a display case. The unidentified men entered the MAK during opening hours and targeted the museum\u2019s current exhibition of jewelry by Van Cleef […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,226],"class_list":["post-2116776","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-artnews-com","tag-crawlmanager"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2116776","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2116776"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2116776\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2116776"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2116776"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2116776"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}