$4 million diamond necklace stolen in daylight heist at Vienna museum

A daylight heist at Vienna's Museum of Applied Arts resulted in the theft of a $4 million diamond-encrusted necklace on Thursday. Police are investigating the brazen robbery, which occurred during a jewelry exhibition, and have released CCTV images of the two unmasked men involved. One suspect is believed to have been armed with a firearm.

The suspects, posing as visitors, smashed open a glass display case using a hammer and fled the scene on foot. They targeted a platinum necklace, designed by French luxury jeweler Van Cleef & Arpels for Egyptian Queen Nazli in the 1930s. The necklace, featuring 673 diamonds totaling over 200 carats, includes a central six-carat stone surrounded by baguette-cut stones and numerous smaller diamonds in a sunburst pattern.

Queen Nazli, wife of Egypt's King Fuad I, commissioned the piece along with a matching tiara for her daughter's wedding in 1939.

The necklace was later sold at auction in 2015 for nearly $4.3 million, before being loaned to the MAK museum for an exhibition. Following the theft, the exhibition was briefly closed and has since reopened with enhanced security measures, including metal detectors. Austrian police are conducting extensive search operations, deploying dog units and seeking assistance from Interpol to locate the suspects.