A necklace which used to belong to Queen Consort Nazli of Egypt has been stolen from a museum in Austria, Vienna.
The daring heist took place while the museum was open with two unmasked men caught on CCTV smashing a display case and taking off with the necklace, which had been on loan to the institution from earlier this year.
The suspects, one of whom is reported to be armed, are still at large with police disseminating photos of the suspects with the manhunt across the city ongoing. Experts believe that the thieves will attempt to remove the diamonds from the necklace, making it worth far less than the $4 million paid at auction a decade ago as only the weight of the stones has value on the black market.
The necklace, made by Van Cleef & Arpels, was commissioned in 1939 and worn by Queen Consort Nazli during her daughter’s wedding to Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who would become the last Shah of Iran.
The art deco, one of a kind platinum piece features more than 600 round and baguette cut diamonds in a sunburst motif and came with a matching tiara. The centre round diamond alone weighs six carats with the necklace featuring over 200 carats in total.
The necklace is considered one of the finest Van Cleef & Arpels ever created and was in the museum for an exhibition honouring the maison and their work over the last 200 years.
The necklace stayed with the Queen until she was stripped of her royal titles by her son in 1950 after which she moved to Los Angeles where she would fall into significant debt. In a bid to free herself from her financial woes, Nazli auctioned the necklace with Sotheby’s in 1974, with it fetching $170,000.
After the sale, the necklace completely disappeared from view until it was once again offered up at auction in 2015. At that auction, the necklace was sold for $4.3 million, not quite reaching the upper end of its estimate.
The heist follows a spate of high-profile robberies of museums including the Louvre in Paris which saw jewels worth more than $88 million taken from the world famous gallery.
That heist saw three thieves disguised as construction workers steal eight pieces of the French Crown Jewels in a robbery that took less than eight minutes during regular opening hours.
Almost a year on and the jewels have not yet been recovered while only two men have been arrested in connection with the robbery.
The robbery also severely damaged the crown of Empress Eugenie, which was crushed and dropped while they were fleeing, leading to it losing ten of its 1,354 diamonds and one of its golden eagles, while its shape has also deformed.
However, experts and the French authorities have said that the 19th Century crown can be restored to its original state without reconstruction, a process which is ongoing.
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