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Museums serve as portals to history, offering visitors the rare opportunity to experience artworks and relics with immense cultural and historical value. Since it's impossible to turn back time and recreate these treasures, they become invaluable — until criminals make their move.
Films like How to Steal a Million and The Thomas Crown Affair portray museum heists as thrilling and glamorous. In real life, many of these heists are just as exciting, with some still shrouded in mystery. Once stolen, these priceless items can fetch millions of dollars. It’s no surprise that museums are prime targets for thieves.
Here’s a list of 10 museum heists that remain unsolved to this day.
10. 13 Stolen Artworks, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston, 1990
When police officers walk through a museum, visitors assume they are there to protect the priceless artworks. However, on March 18, 1990, two men posing as police officers at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum walked out with 13 pieces of art valued at half a billion dollars. Despite 32 years passing, the thieves remain unidentified, and the stolen masterpieces have never been recovered.
Among the stolen works were paintings by Rembrandt van Rijn: A Lady and Gentleman in Black, Christ in the Storm on the Sea of Galilee, and Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Other missing pieces include Chez Tortoni by Edouard Manet, Landscape with Obelisk by Govaert Flinck, and The Concert by Johannes Vermeer. Additionally, five works on paper by Edgar Degas, along with two antique objects — a bronze eagle finial and an ancient Chinese gu (beaker) — were taken.
Even after all these years, new leads continue to emerge in this unresolved case.
9. 12 Stolen Paintings, National Museum of Fine Arts, Paraguay, 2002
In July 2002, Paraguay held the largest art exhibition in its history, but it wasn’t just art lovers who saw it as an opportunity. A group of thieves meticulously planned a heist over two months. According to reports, the criminals rented a nearby storefront and pretended to be businessmen while secretly digging a tunnel leading directly to the National Museum of Fine Arts in Asuncion, the venue for the exhibition.
Over the course of two months, the thieves made off with 12 paintings, reportedly valued at around $1 million. These works included Adolphe Piot’s Woman’s Head, Esteban Murillo’s The Virgin Mary and Jesus, Gustave Courbet’s Landscape
8. Stolen 18th-Century Jewels, Green Vault Dresden, 2019
In 2019, six men faced trial for allegedly stealing priceless 18th-century jewels from a German museum. The haul, which included 21 pieces worth nearly $120 million, was taken in a daring heist from the Green Vault in Dresden. The thieves, brothers and cousins aged between 23 and 28, are believed to be part of a notorious Berlin criminal family known for their involvement in numerous thefts.
The thieves are accused of breaking into Dresden’s Green Vault by starting a fire that disabled the power supply at Dresden Castle. When they entered wearing masks, the security alarms were rendered useless due to the outage. The stolen treasures included a bejeweled epaulet, a rapier, brooches, and skirt buttons.
7. Van Gogh’s The Parsonage Garden at Nuenen in Spring, Dutch Museum, 2020
Vincent Willem van Gogh, one of the world’s most beloved artists, posthumously became a global sensation. Therefore, it wasn’t shocking when his painting The Parsonage Garden at Nuenen in Spring was stolen in a quick heist at the Singer Laren Museum in the Netherlands in March 2020.
The thieves broke into the museum at dawn while it was temporarily closed due to the pandemic. Although the alarm went off, the burglars had vanished by the time authorities arrived. Ironically, the biggest loss from the theft was the Groninger Museum, the actual owner of the painting. At the time, the van Gogh masterpiece, now valued at $6 million, was on loan to the Singer Laren.
6. Stolen Henry Moore Sculpture: Reclining Figure, England, 2005
It’s hard to believe that thieves could steal an 11-foot (3.7-meter) bronze statue weighing 4,000 pounds (1,814 kilograms). Yet, that’s exactly what three robbers did when they took the sculpture known as Reclining Figure. The statue, once on display at the Henry Moore Foundation estate, was the artist’s original piece, with six other versions displayed in museums across the globe.
Despite the massive size of Reclining Figure, it was never seen again after being stolen in the dead of night in December 2005. Security footage captured the thieves carrying off the $4 million statue, but they have never been identified. Authorities fear the sculpture may have been melted down for scrap metal, and its recovery seems unlikely.
5. Michelangelo’s Mask of a Faun, Bargello Museum Florence, 1944
The Sistine Chapel ceiling, the statue of David, and The Pieta are some of Michelangelo Buonarroti’s most famous and accessible works. Sadly, Mask of a Faun, a lesser-known sculpture, mysteriously vanished in 1944.
Also referred to as Head of a Faun, this marble sculpture depicted a bearded and laughing faun. Michelangelo made a few revisions to it before declaring it complete, a decision that helped attract the attention of his notable patron, Lorenzo de Medici.
The Mask of a Faun was displayed in the Bargello Museum in Florence, Italy, until World War II, when it was moved to Poppi Castle for safekeeping. In August 1944, German soldiers stole the artworks hidden in the castle. They loaded the mask onto one of several trucks, which briefly stopped in Forli, Italy, before leaving a week later. After that, the trail disappeared, and no trace of the mask has ever been found.
4. Canadian Art Heist, Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, 1972
On September 4, 1972, three men pulled off a daring heist at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. They incapacitated several guards, tied them up, and made off with $2 million worth of art, jewelry, and artifacts. Among the 18 paintings stolen was a masterpiece by the renowned Dutch artist Rembrandt van Rijn.
By 1992, the stolen Rembrandt was valued at $20 million, and the other paintings were estimated at another $20 million combined. These included Landscape with Vehicles and Cattle by students of Jan Breughel the Elder, La Reveuse a la Fontaine by Jean Baptiste-Camille Corot, and Vanitas Still Life with Books, a Globe, a Skull, a Violin, and a Fan by Jan Davidszoon de Heem.
Fifty years have passed, yet the mystery of the theft remains unsolved—no suspects, and not a single piece has been recovered. The heist remains the largest art theft in Canada’s history.
3. The Tucker’s Cross Theft, 19??
In 1955, marine explorer Teddy Tucker discovered a 22-karat gold cross adorned with emeralds. The treasure was believed to have belonged to a Spanish galleon wrecked off the coast of Bermuda in 1594. Known as Tucker’s Cross, it held the title of the most valuable shipwreck discovery until 1997.
Tucker sold the cross to the Bermuda government with the agreement that it would remain on the island. It was kept in the Aquarian Museum, managed by Tucker and his wife, until it was revealed in 1975 that the cross was a fake. The discovery came just before Queen Elizabeth’s visit to the island. The cross on display turned out to be a cheap plastic replica. To this day, there are no clues as to the whereabouts of the original Tucker’s Cross.
2. The Great Chinese Heist, 2010–2015
Between 2010 and 2015, several art heists occurred across different European cities, all targeting Chinese artworks and treasures. This pattern led some to speculate: Could the Chinese government be involved in what became known as the Great Chinese Heist?
The heists began in 2010 in Stockholm, Sweden, when a series of car fires set the streets ablaze. As authorities responded to the crisis, a group of thieves seized the opportunity and raided the Swedish royal residence, stealing valuable Chinese antiques from the Chinese Pavilion. A month later, thieves struck again, this time targeting the KODE Museum in Bergen, Norway, and making off with several items from the China Collection.
The robbers didn’t stop there. Their next target was Durham in England, where the Oriental Museum at Durham University was struck. Following this, they moved on to a museum in Cambridge.
In 2013, it appears the same group of thieves returned to the KODE Museum, stealing 22 more Chinese relics. Then, in 2015, they hit the Chinese Museum at the Chateau de Fontainebleau in Paris, where many of the items were looted by French soldiers during the infamous 1860 sack of Beijing’s Old Summer Palace. Among the stolen treasures were porcelain vases and a mandala crafted from gold, turquoise, and coral. This led to speculation that the Chinese government might be behind these robberies, aiming to reclaim lost treasures.
The string of robberies continued across Europe, with the same pattern emerging: Chinese treasures that had been looted by foreign armies long ago were being targeted.
1. Caravaggio’s Nativity, Oratory Of San Lorenzo Palermo, 1969
In 1609, Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio created the iconic painting titled Nativity with Saints Lawrence and Francis in Palermo, Sicily. The artwork depicted the newborn Jesus Christ in the manger, a portrayal unlike anything seen in modern times.
On October 17, 1969, two thieves infiltrated the Oratory of San Lorenzo in Palermo and made off with the Nativity. Although the painting remains missing to this day, rumors persist that it might be in the hands of the Sicilian mafia. Despite the involvement of the FBI, the prospects of recovering it appear bleak.
In 2015, a replica of the Nativity was commissioned, and it now hangs proudly at the altar of the Oratory of Saint Lawrence.
