Austrian police have launched an international manhunt for two men who allegedly stole a diamond necklace worth more than $4m from a museum in Vienna in a brazen daylight robbery.
The suspects reportedly entered the Vienna Museum of Applied Arts (MAK) on Thursday afternoon as ordinary visitors after purchasing tickets to the exhibition where the jewellery was displayed.
Police said the men smashed a glass display case before taking the platinum necklace, which is decorated with more than 600 diamonds, and escaping from the museum.
One of the suspects was reportedly carrying what police believed was a real firearm during the incident.
According to authorities, the pair fled in the direction of Vienna’s Stadtpark, located south of the museum.
Police have released CCTV images showing the two men and are appealing to members of the public who may have information about their whereabouts.
The stolen necklace was created by French luxury jeweller Van Cleef & Arpels for Egypt’s former royal family.
It formed part of an exhibition dedicated to the jewellery house that was scheduled to remain at MAK until September.
The necklace, which contains diamonds weighing more than 200 carats, was worn by Queen Nazli in 1939 during the wedding of her daughter, Fawzia, to Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the future Shah of Iran.
Van Cleef & Arpels has described the piece as a “triumph of white jewellery”.
The necklace was valued at between $3.6m and $4.6m when it was put up for auction about a decade ago.
MAK director general Lilli Hollein said the museum was deeply affected by the incident.
“The theft of a highly valuable piece of jewellery… has hit us hard,” she said.
Hollein said the museum had worked with Van Cleef & Arpels to establish a dedicated security plan for the exhibition and had taken precautions seriously.
“Security issues were taken very seriously and all security measures were carefully prepared.”
She said museum staff remained calm during what she described as an “armed incident” and followed established procedures. No one was injured.
Hollein added that the museum had carefully reassessed its security arrangements before the exhibition opened, “particularly in light of the incidents at major museums in recent years”.
Police dog teams have been deployed across Vienna and neighbouring Lower Austria as investigators examine forensic evidence and security footage.
The exhibition was reopened on Friday, although the space where the necklace had been displayed was left empty.
The Vienna robbery comes amid a series of high-profile museum thefts across Europe.
On the same day, thieves reportedly stole a major collection of prehistoric jewellery and artefacts from a museum in Spain. Earlier this month, four Renaissance paintings were taken from a museum in Sicily, while three works by Renoir, Cézanne and Matisse were stolen from a museum in Parma earlier this year.
The incidents follow last year’s dramatic robbery at the Louvre in Paris, where a masked gang stole valuable jewels in broad daylight.
Europol has warned that museum thefts are becoming more dangerous, saying they are “becoming increasingly aggressive, with a shift towards violent and forceful methods”.
The European law enforcement agency said the trend “may indicate the involvement of new criminal networks”.
