Thieves have carried out a heist at Dresden’s Green Vault, one of the world’s oldest museums containing priceless treasures and jewels, German officials said Monday. The treasury of Augustus the Strong of Saxony was established in 1723 and today contains around 4,000 objects of gold, precious stones and other materials on display in the historic palace
Remember Dhoom 2 in which Hrithik Roshan wooed the viewers with some insanely clever thefts? Well, something similar happened today at the Green Vault Museum in Dresden, Germany.
In a mind-boggling heist which is also being hailed as the world’s biggest-ever theft in postwar history, thieves broke into Green Vault and stole priceless jewels. The burglars robbed three of the ten diamond jewellery sets from Europe’s treasure collection.
“The Grüne Gewölbe (or Green Vault) has been stripped of hundreds of artifacts after the thieves reportedly started a fire in the early hours of Monday that led to a breakdown in the power supply and the failure of security alarms,” The Guardian reported.
The thieves sneaked inside the museum by removing part of an iron grill and then smashing the glass of a window on the ground floor.
As per a report by BBC, the stolen sets consist of 37 parts each. It is being suspected that the thieves may try to break them up before selling them off.
The director of Dresden’s State Art Collections, Marion Ackermann, said it is not possible to estimate the value of stolen items. She said, “We cannot give value because it is impossible to sell.”
Confirming the theft, German police said in a statement, “We can confirm that there has been a break-in in the Grüne Gewölbe, the perpetrators are on the run.”
Thieves cut the power supply, steal jewels worth billions from the museum.
In a dramatic robbery that seems straight out of movie Dhoom, a gang of thieves pulled off the biggest heist in history by stealing $1.1 billion worth of jewels from a museum in Germany.
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The dramatic robbery happened in the early hours of Monday in the German city of Dresden when thieves broke into the Green Vault at Dresden’s Royal Palace, which is home to around 4,000 precious objects of ivory, gold, silver, and jewels after they deactivated alarms by cutting the electricity supply.
After disarming the security system with the fire, the gang then dismantled iron bars on the window of the building to allow them to get in and replaced them again so as not to arouse suspicion. The gang then smashed open the showcases inside the vault using a sledgehammer and pulled out three sets of diamonds with an estimated value of around €1 billion (£850million). The suspects then fled in an Audi A6 and remain on the run.
Hundreds of priceless artifacts also have been stripped from the gallery in what police are calling the largest art heist since the Second World War.
However, the director of Dresden’s state art collections, Marion Ackermann, said it was impossible to estimate the value of the items. Meanwhile, despite the power cut, a surveillance camera kept working and filmed two men breaking in, and the police are investigating the footage to get a hold of them.
The collection targeted by the thieves was founded in the 18th-century and is of huge importance to the history and culture of the people of Saxony, the German state in which the museum is located, as per German media.
“Not only the State Art Collections were robbed, but we Saxons,” tweeted Michael Kretschmer, the minister-president of Saxony, the German state where Dresden is located.