Police are searching for the bold thieves who made off with priceless diamonds and other historic treasures from the Grünes Gewölbe, or “Green Vault,” state museum in Dresden, Germany, early Monday.
The museum has a large collection of jewels, Baroque artifacts and intricately crafted golden tableaux amassed between 1723 and 1730 by August the Strong, the Saxon elector and arts patron who later became king of Poland.
Early reports of the heist sparked incredulity and worries about how much was taken, since the historic Green Vault collection includes thousands of rare and irreplaceable items. The loot’s material value seems to have fallen short of the $1 billion initially reported by some German news outlets, but Marion Ackermann, general director of the Dresden State Art Collections, said the pilfered items have priceless cultural value.
Thieves targeted three sets of items in the Jewel Room of the Green Vault museum in a heist carried out early Monday. The burgled room is seen here in a photo provided by the Dresden State Art Collections.
Police in Dresden say that the heist took just minutes and that the thieves targeted three vitrines, or display cases, in the museum’s Jewel Room. Surveillance video shows two black-clad people rushing into the room and using what looks to be a hatchet or small ax to smash the glass displays, viciously forcing their way into the finely crafted cases. The scene takes place in darkness, with the room’s ornate walls and polished checkerboard floor illuminated only by the infiltrators’ flashlights.