Two paintings by impressionist master Pierre-Auguste Renoir, stolen from a museum in southern France and later discovered hidden behind a wall, have sustained slight damage, prosecutors said on Monday. In September, thieves broke into the museum in Cagnes-sur-Mer and escaped with two works by Renoir, abandoning two others as they fled. The value of all…
An amateur archaeologist who discovered several Roman silver coins in a field in western Germany realized he had stumbled upon something bigger when his metal detector kept beeping. Oliver Riedl called the authorities for help, and a group of experts who began digging immediately discovered a total of 934 Roman silver denarii. It is the…
Two men bought tickets to enter Vienna’s Museum of Applied Arts (MAK) before smashing a display case, grabbing a 200-carat platinum and diamond necklace and walking away, police said Friday. Austrian media said the Van Cleef and Arpels necklace, with 673 precious stones, was worth several million dollars. It is the latest in a series…
Thieves on Thursday raided the Treasure of Villena — one of the greatest Bronze Age gold collections — in the latest high-profile heist at a European museum, officials said. The raid on the 50-plus mainly gold objects in the Spanish town of Villena lasted just minutes. “The alarm at the Villena Museum went off around…
The first time I stood beneath the ceiling of the Sadequain Gallery at Frere Hall, I could not look away. Arz-o-Samawat [The Earth and the Heavens] was Sadequain’s most ambitious mural and possibly his largest. His demise in 1986 left the mural permanently unfinished, and the empty blue space that remains gives the work a…
