Police in Dresden are investigating one of the most audacious museum heists in recent years, after thieves broke into the city’s historic Green Vault and stole as many as 100 pieces of 18th-century jewellery from the Saxon royal collection.
Dirk Syndram, the director of the Green Vault collection, refused to give an estimate of how much the stolen items were worth but said they were of “incalculable cultural value”.
According to the Dresden police, the thieves cut away a lattice of iron bars and smashed through a window before entering the jewellery room, one of a suite of opulent Baroque apartments that house the most precious pieces of the royal collection.