In October this year, thieves disguised as construction workers broke into the Louvre in Paris and stole nine pieces of "priceless" jewellery dating from the Napoleonic era. One of the items, a crown, was discovered nearby. The remaining eight, described as being worth many tens of millions of dollars, remain missing, and experts fear the culprits may melt the historic artefacts down.
Museums, galleries and stately homes have long been magnets for thieves. Sometimes stolen treasures are recovered, but often they disappear completely, even when the people responsible for the thefts have been caught.
From crown jewels to a gold toilet, read on to discover some of the world's most valuable treasures that have been pinched from places where they should have been safe, and have never been found. All dollar amounts in US dollars.
Although they were constantly guarded by soldiers and policemen, the Irish Crown Jewels were stolen from a safe in Dublin Castle back in July 1907. There are many theories about the thieves, but the treasure, which is believed to be worth around $20 million (£15m) in total today, has never been located.
The jewels consist of a star decorated with diamonds, emeralds, and rubies, a diamond badge of the Order of St Patrick, and five gold jewel-encrusted collars. The hoard is thought to be buried somewhere in the Wicklow Mountains, but police have searched several sites with metal detectors without success. The crime remains one of Ireland's biggest mysteries.
Described as the "most stolen artwork of all time", Hubert or Jan van Eyck's 15th-century altarpiece Adoration of the Mystic Lamb has disappeared several times over the centuries. First, it was nearly burned by Calvinists, then robbed by Napoleon, then stolen during the First World War. One of its 12 panels, which depicts the so-called Just Judges, was taken from the Saint Bavo Cathedral in Ghent, Belgium in April 1934 and is still missing today.
The remaining 11 panels, stolen again during World War II, have returned to the cathedral and are now protected by a €30 million ($35m/£26m) bulletproof glass case, but the whereabouts of the 12th panel remains a mystery. Authorities decided not to pay a ransom demand for one million Belgian francs, and the suspected thief refused to reveal where he had hidden the artwork when he confessed to the heist on his deathbed. Experts believe they've found the location of the stolen piece – below a major square in Ghent – but investigators have been reluctant to dig up the paving stones. Should they change their minds, the artwork could finally be complete again.
Dating from around 1489, the Head of a Faun was the first known sculpture of the great Renaissance master Michelangelo. The painter of the world-famous ceiling of the Sistine Chapel is believed to have crafted the marble artwork when he was only 15 or 16, winning him the patronage of the powerful Florentine leader Lorenzo de' Medici.
Until 1944, the priceless sculpture was displayed in the Bargello Museum in Florence, Italy. In August that year, however, the Nazis looted the Michelangelo and loaded it onto a truck along with other treasures. Some experts have suggested the sculpture may have eventually found its way to the Soviet Union, but to this day it remains lost.
This self-portrait by Dutch master Vincent Van Gogh, painted in 1888, hasn't been seen since 1945. It's widely believed to have been destroyed in an air raid on Germany in the Second World War. However, there may still be hope, as some sources suggest the oil painting survived the blaze.
The masterpiece was taken from the Kaiser-Friedrich Museum in Magdeburg, Germany by the Nazis in the early part of the Second World War and hidden in their secret salt mines art repository in Stassfurt before the fire. Today, it features on the Monuments Men Foundation's most wanted list, which is dedicated to recovering stolen art.
Made of platinum and boasting almost 3,000 diamonds, Parisian jeweller Cartier spent almost three years crafting the so-called Patiala Necklace from 1928, a necklace for the then-Maharaja of the Indian state Patiala, Bhupinder Singh of Patiala (pictured). The opulent piece of jewellery, which has been valued at over $30 million (£23m) in today's money, also contained a number of Burmese rubies as well as a yellow 428-carat De Beers diamond, the seventh largest in the world.
In 1948, the opulent piece of jewellery mysteriously disappeared from the royal treasury of Patiala. Decades later, in 1982, the De Beers diamond reappeared at auction in Geneva, Switzerland. Another 16 years later, a Cartier representative stumbled upon the platinum chains of the necklace in a second-hand jewellery store in London, but with the biggest diamonds and the rubies gone. While Cartier was able to recreate the necklace, the whereabouts of the original gemstones are still a mystery.
For more than three centuries, this 1609 painting by Italian Baroque master Caravaggio hung above the altar of the Oratory of San Lorenzo in Palermo, Italy. But on a stormy night in October 1969, the Nativity with St. Francis and St. Lawrence, which has been valued at $20 million (£15m), was cut out of its frame, allegedly by the Sicilian Mafia, and went missing.
One of the FBI's most wanted stolen artworks, the painting still hasn't been recovered. In 2015, a replica was commissioned to fill the empty frame in the church while detectives continued to try to track down the valuable original. The Guardian has since revealed the Mafia sliced off a piece of the painting's canvas to convince the Catholic Church to make a deal for its return, according to the testimony of a priest.
This 1887 oil painting of yellow and red poppies by Dutch master Vincent Van Gogh has been stolen twice. Recovered in Kuwait 10 years after it was nabbed from Cairo's Mohamed Mahmoud Khalil Museum in 1977, the second theft remains unresolved. Valued at a hefty $55 million (£42m), the artwork disappeared again from the same museum in 2010.
After the second theft, 11 culture ministry employees were found guilty of negligence of their duties and sentenced to jail but freed on bail. Egyptian billionaire Naguib Sawiris has offered a reward of $175,000 (£135k) for information leading to its recovery, which he hopes will lead to witnesses coming forward.
Over to Sweden, where the theft of George Braque’s La nappe blanche (or Still Life) from a museum in 1993 has left authorities perplexed to this day as to its whereabouts. The 1928 painting was part of a haul of artwork stolen that night, which had a total value of $52 million (£40m) and included works by Picasso.
The so-called “Indiana Jones of the artworld”, art detective Arthur Brand has teamed up with journalist Arvid Hallberg to find the painting. Brand was responsible for recovering Picasso’s Dora Maar, which was stolen along with La nappe blanche nearly 30 years ago. The art-sleuthing pair suspect the Braque has been “in the possession of a northern European” somewhere in Spain.
Worth a whopping $200 million (£150m), Johannes Vermeer's The Concert is thought to be the most valuable stolen object ever. The painting was cut from its frame, alongside Rembrandt's The Storm on the Sea of Galilee and 10 other important works of art, at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston in March 1990.
One of the biggest art heists in history, the crime became infamous because the Gardner Museum didn't have insurance for its holdings at the time. In the early 2000s, an organised crime syndicate tried to sell the expensive Vermeer in Philadelphia, but the FBI was unable to locate it. In recent years, allegations that the artwork was eventually shipped to the IRA by Boston's Winter Hill gang have surfaced.
While the world celebrated the new millennium with fireworks, a thief broke into the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, England and stole the View of Auvers-sur-Oise by Paul Cézanne. The landscape painting, which is valued at $3.9 million (£3m), has not been found.
The burglar was a professional. Detectives reported that he cut a hole in the roof of the city's Ashmolean Museum, under the cover of the noise of the midnight fireworks, and descended into the art gallery by rope ladder. He then created a smokescreen with a canister and fan to foil security cameras and escaped with the painting the same way he came in. The robbery took just 10 minutes. A few weeks after the heist, investigators thought they had found the artwork in a pub, but it turned out to be a copy.
Dubbed by police as the "art heist of the century", Le Pigeon aux Petits-Pois by Pablo Picasso was stolen from the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris alongside four other paintings, including a Matisse and another Braque, worth a total of $123 million (£94m).
The canvases were discovered missing from the museum when it opened its doors in May 2010. When the culprit was arrested in 2011, he claimed he had thrown the artworks in a rubbish container after panicking. Police doubt that assertion, however, not giving up hope that the valuable paintings might still be out there somewhere.
In the early hours of 27 March 2017, a giant Canadian gold coin called the 'Big Maple Leaf' worth $4 million (£3.1m), disappeared from the Bode Museum in Berlin, Germany. And it was quite a heist: three thieves broke in through a window, wheeled the 220-pound coin, which is about the size of a car tyre, through the museum on a roller board, then used a rope and wheelbarrow to transport it across rail tracks and through a park to a getaway car.
A few months after the heist, German police arrested three men from a family linked to organised crime, along with a museum employee who allegedly advised the thieves about safety measures. While three of the culprits were sentenced to prison (one was acquitted due to inconclusive evidence), it's believed the rare coin has disappeared forever. Investigators found gold dust on clothing and a car used by the suspected robbers, indicating they may have melted the treasure down.
In 2019's most headline-grabbing theft, a solid gold working toilet, created by Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan for an installation called America, was taken by thieves from England's Blenheim Palace in September, just days after it had been unveiled to the public. At first, some suspected the theft was an elaborate prank concocted by the artist, who is famous for his crazy stunts. A reward of £100k ($130k) was put up for the toilet's safe return.
Despite seven people being arrested following a lengthy investigation – two of whom were eventually sentenced to jail at the start of this year – the toilet has never been recovered. As it was plumbed in and fully working, the robbery also caused a significant amount of flooding and damage to the stately home, which was the birthplace of former prime minister Winston Churchill.
On the night of Saturday 14 March 2020, a painting by the renowned artist Anthony Van Dyck was stolen from the Christ Church Picture Gallery at Oxford University, England. A Soldier on Horseback, painted in 1616 and valued at $1.2 million (£920k), was stolen along with A Boy Drinking, Annibale Carracci's painting from 1580, and Salvator Rosa's A Rocky Coast, with Soldiers Studying a Plan, from the 1640s.
In 2024, A Rocky Coast was thankfully returned to the museum, but the location of the remaining artworks remains a mystery.
March 2020 was a popular month for art theft. Less than two weeks after the Van Dyck went missing, a Van Gogh vanished from the walls of the Singer Laren Museum in the Netherlands. Parsonage Garden at Nuenen in Spring was taken on 30 March – Van Gogh’s birthday – after thieves smashed their way through the glass door to the gallery in the early hours of the morning and vanished by the time police arrived on the scene.
Parsonage Garden at Nuenen in Spring has an estimated value of €6 million ($7m/£5.4m) and was on loan from the Groninger Museum at the time. A police investigation to find the painting is ongoing, while art detective Arthur Brand has the valuable artwork high up on his to-find list.
In the early hours of 27 August 2020, police rushed to the Hofje van Mevrouw van Aerden museum in Leerdam, Netherlands after being alerted to the theft of a painting by a Dutch Master. Frans Hals' Two Laughing Boys, which depicts two young men laughing with a mug of beer, had previously been stolen from the same museum in 1988 and 2011. After the first theft in 1988, it took three years to track down the painting, while it took six months to find it after the second theft.
Estimated to be worth €15 million ($18m/£14m) according to an art expert who spoke to Dutch broadcaster RTL Nieuws, the painting, dating back to 1626, is thought to have been pilfered by thieves who broke in through the back door of the small museum. Police used CCTV and appealed to the public for information, but the investigation is ongoing.
On 21 May 2021, at around 10.30pm local time, a set of rosary beads (pictured) that Mary Queen of Scots carried to her execution in 1587, along with gold and silver artefacts including Mary's coronation cups, were stolen from Arundel Castle in West Sussex, England. The stolen items were worth as much as £1 million ($1.3m) in total, although a castle spokesperson described the haul taken by the thieves as "priceless".
The thieves are yet to be found, but are thought to have entered Arundel Castle through a window and smashed a glass cabinet to steal the treasures. An abandoned vehicle that had been set alight in the nearby town of Barlavington, about 20 minutes' drive away, has been identified by local police as "linked" to the crime.
Now see some stolen treasures that were sensationally recovered