Bronze Dalí Book Cover Stolen From French Museum
Thieves stole a 150kg bronze book cover designed by Salvador Dalí from a museum in central France overnight.
The cover vanished from the Centre d'art contemporain d'Issoire, a private museum in Issoire, Puy-de-Dôme, during the night of 4 to 5 October 2026, La Croix reported. Police have not publicly named a suspect, and no details of how the piece was removed have been confirmed.
The object is the cover for the Livre de l'Apocalypse, a French name for the Book of Revelation, also called the Apocalypse of St John, The Telegraph reported. It was conceived in 1958 as a collective art project, bringing several artists together around one publication, according to ARTnews.
That history helps explain its scale. The Dalí cover alone is reported to weigh 150kg, or 330lb. A France 2 television report put the wider book linked to the cover at 210 kilos, a reminder that this was not a volume built to sit on a bedside table.
French regional broadcaster France 3 has described the Livre de l'Apocalypse as an exceptional and unique piece. The centre in Issoire, a town south of Clermont-Ferrand, is a modest venue for such a weighty work, which makes its disappearance all the more startling for local visitors.
The theft follows other museum burglaries in France, including cases in Paris, Saône-et-Loire and Limoges, where a porcelain museum was targeted. That wider pattern was outlined by Franceinfo in its coverage of museum security.
What makes this stand out is the sheer logistics. It is heavy. Moving 150kg of bronze in the dark, from inside a museum, takes planning, equipment and more than one pair of hands.
