Egyptian queen’s necklace with 673 diamonds stolen in Vienna
Austrian police are searching for two men suspected of stealing a 200-carat platinum necklace set with 673 diamonds from Vienna’s MAK Museum of Applied Arts. The piece, which previously belonged to Egyptian Queen Nazli, was on loan to the museum.
As The Guardian reports, the robbery took place on Thursday afternoon during the museum’s opening hours. The unmasked men bought tickets to the exhibition, then smashed a glass display case with a hammer and took the historic jewel. No one was injured during the incident, although several witnesses were in the hall.
Search for the suspects
Vienna law enforcement officials released images of the two suspects captured by surveillance cameras. According to police, the thieves fled in an unknown direction with the jewel. Officers searched the city center and deployed a service dog to look for the men.
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The newspaper Kronen reported that investigators consider it likely that the men were acting on behalf of a criminal group. This assumption has not been presented as an established fact.
Queen Nazli’s necklace
The necklace was displayed at a Van Cleef & Arpels jewelry exhibition, which had been running at the MAK since June and featured more than 300 works by the French jewelry house. According to museum documentation, Nazli, the queen consort of Egypt, wore the piece at the 1939 wedding of her daughter Fawzia to Iranian Crown Prince Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. He later became the Shah of Iran.
In 2015, the necklace was sold at a Sotheby’s auction in New York for $4.3 million. A guided tour of the exhibition scheduled for Friday was canceled, and the exhibition itself, which was due to end on September 27, was temporarily closed.
