Culture News

Two museum heists in one day: Spain's Villena gold and a queen's necklace in Vienna

Two European museums were robbed on Thursday, August 27. Before dawn in Villena, in Spain's Alicante province, thieves raided the Treasure of Villena, a Bronze Age hoard of mainly gold objects found in 1963 and dating to about 1000BC. The alarm went off at about 5.20am and the thieves were gone by 5.24am, a council spokesperson told The Guardian and AFP, whose report ran on Al Jazeera. The mayor valued the gold alone at about €1.7m.

“They’ve taken most of the treasure” — Fulgencio Cerdán, mayor of Villena, via The Guardian

That afternoon in Vienna, two unmasked men who had bought tickets smashed a case with a hammer at the Museum of Applied Arts (MAK) and fled with a Van Cleef & Arpels platinum necklace of 673 diamonds, about 200 carats, The Guardian reported. Queen Nazli of Egypt wore it at her daughter Fawzia's 1939 wedding to Iran's crown prince. The National called it Vienna's highest-value art theft since Cellini's Saliera in 2003; Egyptian Streets focused on the royal history.

All the outlets linked the thefts to a wave of raids since the Louvre jewel heist last October. The Guardian quoted a Europol report on a shift “towards violent and forceful methods”.

How each outlet framed it

• The Guardian — both raids as part of a European crime trend.
• Al Jazeera (AFP) — the speed of the Villena job and the possible decoy alarm.
• The National — suspect descriptions and the necklace's value.
• Egyptian Streets — Queen Nazli and the 1939 royal wedding.

Where the numbers differ: The Guardian counts 66 objects in Villena; AFP says “50-plus”. The necklace sold for $4.3m in 2015, says The Guardian; The National gives about $4m. The Guardian puts the MAK show at more than 300 works; Egyptian Streets at about 500 objects.