Daylight Heist in Vienna: Thieves Steal Queen Nazli of Egypt's 673-Diamond Necklace at Hammer-Point
Two thieves walked into Vienna's Museum of Applied Arts (MAK) on 27 August, bought tickets, smashed a display case with a hammer and walked out with a diamond-and-platinum necklace once owned by Queen Nazli of Egypt. Austrian police have clear security footage of both suspects, who were unmasked and struck in daylight, and Interpol has added the necklace to its database of stolen artworks at Austria's request The Art Newspaper.
An international manhunt is now underway. The stolen piece weighs approximately 200 carats and was last appraised at US$4.6 million by Sotheby's Hyperallergic. It is made of pure platinum and set with 673 baguette-cut and brilliant-cut diamonds.
The necklace was on display as part of 'Glanzstücke: Van Cleef & Arpels High Jewellery x Masterpieces from the MAK Collection', an exhibition of around 500 objects — timepieces, jewels and precious pieces — of which more than 300 came from Van Cleef & Arpels and over 200 from the MAK's own permanent collection. The show was due to run until 27 September. The museum closed briefly after the robbery and reopened the following day.
Queen Nazli commissioned the Art Deco, bib-style necklace in 1938. She wore it with a matching tiara to the 1939 wedding of her daughter, Princess Fawzia, to the future Shah of Iran. The necklace's provenance — the documented chain of ownership — runs through decades of royal upheaval. Nazli was stripped of her royal title in 1950 by her son, King Farouk, after her youngest daughter, Princess Fathia, married a Coptic Christian. Nazli then moved to Beverly Hills and later fell into debt.
In 1975, she sent the matching tiara — 274 carats inlaid with 720 diamonds — and the necklace to auction at Sotheby's, where they sold for $127,500 and $140,000 respectively. In 2015 the necklace returned to Sotheby's and sold for $4.3 million The Art Newspaper.
Lilli Hollein, MAK's general and artistic director, said in a statement shared with The Art Newspaper: '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.' A Europol report cited alongside the case points to a rise in violent museum heists, with growing focus on high-value items such as precious metals, gemstones and culturally significant artefacts.
Fawzia Farouk, Queen Nazli's great-granddaughter, expressed 'profound sorrow' at the theft of the 'historic necklace' in a Facebook post on 29 August The Art Newspaper.
What makes this heist stand out is its brazen simplicity. No masks, no night-time break-in, no elaborate bypass of alarms — just two people, two tickets and a hammer, in a building full of visitors. For museums lending or displaying high-value jewellery, the calculus is stark: a piece insured and catalogued, shown behind glass in a public gallery, can be gone in the time it takes a guard to react.
