Thieves smash display case, steal $4 million royal wedding diamond necklace from Vienna museum

Vienna's Museum of Applied Arts became the scene of a brazen daylight robbery when two thieves stole a historic diamond necklace valued at around $4 million. The suspects entered the museum during public visiting hours on August 27, purchased tickets, and then smashed the display case to take the 200-carat jewel.

The stolen item is a significant piece of royal history: a diamond necklace crafted for the 1939 wedding of Princess Fawzia of Egypt to Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who would later become the last Shah of Iran. The necklace was worn by Fawzia's mother, Queen Nazli. It is composed of 673 diamonds and weighs 200 carats. Sotheby's estimated its value between $3.6 million and $4.6 million when it was auctioned in 2015.

Authorities are actively pursuing the two suspects, whose faces were clearly captured on surveillance cameras. The police described the thieves as slim, approximately 175 cm tall, with dark hair and beards, and wearing black clothing and dark sneakers during the heist. They fled the scene on foot after the theft.

This incident marks the highest-value art theft in Vienna since the 2003 disappearance of Benvenuto Cellini's "Saliera" salt cellar. The theft is expected to renew scrutiny of museum security measures, particularly following a series of high-profile art and jewelry heists in Europe, including a $100 million jewelry theft at the Louvre in Paris last year and the recent theft of 3,000-year-old gold artifacts from a museum in Villena, Spain.