You’d think that cases of art theft and robbery in real life are as interesting as they’re portrayed on the big screen, and you’d be absolutely right! The most fascinating art heists in history can easily rival their fictional counterparts in suspense and storytelling, complete with eccentric thieves whose motives go well beyond money, stone-cold detectives who refuse to give up on the case, and plot twists that put most Hollywood heist stories to shame.

10. 1974 Russborough House Heist

On April 26, 1974, an armed gang reportedly led by ‘an attractive woman with a French accent’ raided the Russborough House in Ireland, making off with a collection of valuable artworks worth over $20.4 million at the time. Easily the largest art robbery in history at the time, the heist included paintings by renowned artists like Goya, Reubens, and Vermeer. 

For the operation, the thieves – under the direct supervision of the mysterious woman – entered the house at night and tied up all of its inhabitants, including the owner Alfred Beit. They specifically targeted select masterpieces, like Jan Vermeer’s Lady Writing a Letter, With Her Maid, and Goya’s Woman in a Mantilla priced at $2.4 million, suggesting that they knew exactly what they came for. All of the stolen paintings were later recovered from a car at a residence linked to Rose Dugdale – a British heiress with ties to Irish revolutionary forces. 

9. Quedlinburg Art Robbery

Some time around the end of the Second World War, an American Army officer named Lt. Joe T. Meador stole numerous works of art and other artifacts from the Quedlinburg Abbey in Germany. Now sometimes referred to as the Quedlinburg Art Heist, he went on to store the stolen works in a mine shaft cave to protect them from air raids, followed by shipping them off to his parents in Texas after the war. 

The cache included many prized medieval antiques, including a jeweled ninth-century Samuhel Gospel and a 16th-century prayer book. While letters from the war established his culpability, the theft was never prosecuted by the US Army, effectively bringing the stolen things under the possession of the Meador. After his death in 1980, the pieces were sold or loaned to sustain their failing business. 

The heist only came to light in 1990 with a New York Times report, resulting in legal action. Most of the objects were returned to Germany in 1991, with Meador’s heirs receiving a total of $2.75 million as settlement. 

8. Ghent Altarpiece Heist

Officially called the Adoration of the Mystic Lamb, the Ghent Altarpiece was painted by the Flemish painter Jan van Eyck, with the help of his brother Hubert, in 1432. The elaborate set of 12 panels is often considered the first major oil painting in history, marking the transition between the art of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. It’s also called the ‘most stolen artwork in history’, as the Ghent Altarpiece has been robbed – in part or full – at least seven times, mostly in times of war. 

On April 10, 1934, the Just Judges panel from the altarpiece was stolen once again. Its current whereabouts are one of the biggest mysteries of the art world, as the panel depicting biblical figures was taken from the Saint Bavo Cathedral overnight. Despite extensive investigations in the years since, the panel remains missing to this day. 

7. Sao Paulo Museum Of Art Theft

In December 2007, thieves made off with paintings worth more than $50 million from the Sao Paulo Museum of Art in Brazil. It was blamed on lax security measures, as the museum, also sometimes referred to as MASP, was known to lack a working alarm system, sensors, or infrared-capable cameras. The theft was carried out in the early hours of the morning, as the thieves opened the main door with a rudimentary hydraulic jack and smashed the glass door with a crowbar. 

In the next three minutes or so, the museum lost some of the most famous works in their collection, including Pablo Picasso’s Portrait of Suzanne Bloch and Brazilian artist Candido Portinari’s The Coffee Worker. The collection also included other pieces by European masters like Velazquez and Dali, most of which were uninsured. According to reports, the museum was already facing power cuts due to unpaid bills since at least 2005, and still relied on old-school techniques like patrolling to ensure the safety of its possessions. 

6. Stockholm Museum Of Modern Art Heist

Back in 1993, art thieves in Stockholm executed one of the largest art heists in Sweden’s history. The site was the Museum of Modern Art, famous for its collection of contemporary and classic works but clearly not for its security infrastructure. They entered through the roof after drilling holes in the ceiling on a quiet Sunday night, as they lowered themselves into the main section to steal a collection worth about $52 million. 

The stolen pieces included works by Picasso like The Spring, Dragonfly, The Painter, and others, as well as two paintings by Georges Braque called Chateau la Roche-Guyon and Still Life. The theft went entirely unnoticed by the staff on duty at the time, and was only discovered by a security guard the next morning. 

5. Montreal Museum Of Fine Arts Heist

In September 1972, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts went through what has often been called Canada’s largest art heist. Under the cover of the early morning hours, three thieves descended into the museum through the skylight, and proceeded to overpower and incapacitate the guards on duty at the time. They were questioned for a while about the most valuable works at the facility, though the descriptions provided by the guards were inadequate. The thieves hastily selected 18 paintings and 39 small objects and left, leaving out masterpieces by artists like Goya, El Greco, Picasso, and Rembrandt.

They initially attempted a pulley system to take the stolen art, but eventually opted for the museum’s panel van instead. That ultimately failed, too, resulting in them leaving the museum on foot. The estimated loss was calculated around $2 million at the time, which would be about $14 million in today’s value. 

4. Edvard Munch’s ‘The Scream’

Edvard Munch’s famous painting The Scream has been stolen two times in history. The first one happened in February, 1994 during the Winter Olympics in Lillehammer, when two thieves entered Oslo’s National Gallery and stole the painting by breaking one of the windows inside the museum. The theft triggered an international law enforcement response, and it was eventually recovered by an undercover operation led by British detective Charles Hill.

The second time was a decade later, when in August, 2004, masked gunmen stormed the Munch Museum in Oslo and stole both The Scream and Madonna by Munch. While the heist led to the museum’s temporary closure, the suspects were eventually captured and the paintings recovered, though with some minor damage. 

3. Mona Lisa Heist

The Mona Lisa was stolen from the Louvre in Paris on August 20, 1911, triggering a global media frenzy that turned the painting into the most well-known piece of art in the world. It was executed by a man later identified as Vincenzo Perugia, who entered the museum dressed as an employee and concealed the painting beneath his apron. He was able to easily remove it from its frame, a job that was made even easier by the relaxed attitude of the security active in the facility at the time. 

The heist remained unnoticed for over a day, as everyone thought that the artwork was removed for cleaning or photography. Subsequent investigations involved figures like Guillaume Apollinaire and Pablo Picasso, though they were eventually cleared due to lack of evidence.

The painting remained hidden in Perugia’s apartment for over two years, until he attempted to sell it in 1913. He brought the stolen artwork to Geri, a Florence art dealer, who alerted the authorities instead of purchasing it. Perugia was arrested and the Mona Lisa was authenticated before being returned to the Louvre in January, 1914. 

2. Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum Heist

The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum was looted on March 18, 1990, when thieves made off with 13 artworks valued at over $500 million, including pieces by Rembrandt, Vermeer, and Degas. The heist was completed in about 81 minutes, as the thieves, dressed up as police officers, overpowered the guards and executed the robbery. 

The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum theft remains the world’s largest property theft. It exposed fundamental problems with the security of the famed museum, including lack of interior cameras and inadequate guard training. The stolen works included Vermeer’s The Concert and Rembrandt’s The Storm on the Sea of Galilee – two of the most renowned missing artworks in history. Despite extensive investigations, the case remains unsolved, and the stolen pieces have not been recovered. 

1. World War 2

The Second World War was the most devastating war in history, as well as perhaps the largest robbery of the world’s most renowned art pieces, especially in Europe. Throughout the war, the Third Reich was responsible for deliberately seizing about 20% of Europe’s artistic and cultural treasures, mostly from the Jewish part of the population. There were many motives behind this massive effort, including the Nazi hatred of modern art, Hitler’s personal ambition for a grand Führermuseum in Linz, Austria, and an attempt to erase all parts of the rich and diverse cultural history of European Jews.

The looted art was taken from various European locations and stashed in places like the Musée Jeu de Paume in Paris and the Nazi headquarters in Munich. Retrieving looted and stolen artworks by the Nazis was a big part of the Allied war effort, as volunteers along the entire front rallied to safeguard national art collections and transported them to hidden safehouses. Despite those efforts, however, the Nazis managed to loot more than 600,000 paintings throughout the war, and anywhere between 30,000 to 100,000 of those are still missing.

Museums are gateways to the past, giving the public a chance to enjoy artworks and antiques with cultural and historical significance. Since it’s impossible to go back in time and recreate the treasures from that period, these items become priceless. That is until robbers get their hands on them.

The movies How to Steal a Million and The Thomas Crown Affair make museum heists seem incredibly sexy and thrilling. Their real-life counterparts are sometimes just as thrilling, and some have remained a complete mystery. When they exit a museum, these antique pieces become worth hundreds of thousands—if not millions—of dollars. No wonder museums are popular targets of thievery.

Here is a list of the 10 museum heists that have yet to be solved.

Related: 10 Odd Thefts States Are Known For

10 13 Artworks, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston, 1990

When police officers rove a museum, people expect they are there to keep the precious art safe. But the two policemen who visited the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum on March 18, 1990, walked out with 13 pieces of art. The loot was believed to be worth half a billion dollars. It’s been 32 years since the theft, but the thieves disguised as cops remain unidentified, and the art remains lost.

Several of the stolen artworks were Rembrandt van Rijn’s paintings: A Lady and Gentleman in Black, Christ in the Storm on the Sea of Galilee, and Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Three other paintings were Chez Tortoni by Edouard Manet, Landscape with Obelisk by Govaert Flinck, and The Concert by Johannes Vermeer. The rest were Edgar Degas’s five works/drawings on paper and two antique items: a bronze eagle finial and an ancient Chinese gu (beaker).^[1]

New developments related to the unsolved case continue to pop up even after all this time.

9 12 Paintings, National Museum of Fine Arts, Paraguay, 2002

In July 2002, Paraguay hosted the biggest art exhibition in its history. Unfortunately, a group of thieves also saw it as an opportunity for a big payday. It was an elaborate heist two months in the making. According to reports, the robbers rented a nearby storefront and posed as businessmen. Behind the scenes, they were digging an underground tunnel that led to the National Museum of Fine Arts in Asuncion, the exhibition’s venue.

Within two months, they stole 12 paintings reportedly worth $1 million. Among them were Adolphe Piot’s Woman’s Head, Esteban Murillo’s The Virgin Mary and Jesus, Gustave Courbet’s Landscape, and Tintoretto’s Self Portrait. In 2008, Interpol recovered one painting from a black market in Argentina after it was put up for sale.^[2]

8 18th-Century Jewelry, Green Vault Dresden, 2019

Six men are on trial for allegedly stealing 18th-century jewels from a German museum in 2019. But where are the jewels? Some 21 pieces containing thousands of diamonds worth nearly $120 million were stolen during the Dresden heist in November of that year. The accused are brothers and cousins, aged between 23 and 28, and reportedly members of a notorious Berlin clan involved in many thefts.

They are charged with breaking into Dresden’s Green Vault by starting a fire that cut off the power supply at Dresden Castle. When they entered the building in masks, the security alarms didn’t function because of the power outage. The stolen items include a bejeweled epaulet, rapier, brooches, and skirt buttons.^[3]

7 Van Gogh’s The Parsonage Garden at Nuenen in Spring, Dutch Museum, 2020

Vincent Willem van Gogh posthumously became one of the most popular artists in the world. So it’s not a surprise that his The Parsonage Garden at Nuenen in Spring became the subject of a quick robbery at the Singer Laren Museum in his home country of the Netherlands in March 2020.

The thieves broke into the museum at dawn when the museum was temporarily closed due to the pandemic. While the alarm was tripped, the burglars were gone when authorities arrived. Interestingly, the biggest loser from the theft was the Groninger Museum, which actually owned the painting. Said to be worth $6 million now, the van Gogh piece was on loan to the Singer Laren at the time.^[4]

6 Giant Henry Moore Sculpture: Reclining Figure, England, 2005

It may be hard to imagine that thieves are daring enough to cart away an 11-foot (3.7-meter) bronze statue weighing 4,000 pounds (1,814 kilograms). And yet, that was exactly what three robbers did with the sculpture known as Reclining Figure, which used to lie at the estate of the Henry Moore Foundation. This was the artist’s original piece, with six others sculpted and displayed at museums around the world.

As large as the Reclining Figure was, it was never found again after being stolen in the middle of a night in December 2005. Security cameras captured the thieves with the $4 million statue, but they remain unidentified. It is possible that the sculpture will never be recovered as authorities believe it most likely had been melted down and used as scrap metal.^[5]

5 Michelangelo’s Mask of a Faun, Bargello Museum Florence, 1944

The Sistine Chapel ceiling, the statue of David, and The Pieta are just a few of the well-loved works by the Italian artist Michelangelo Buonarroti. These are productions that the public can easily access. Unfortunately, it is not the same for the Mask of a Faun, which mysteriously disappeared in 1944.

Also known as the Head of a Faun, the sculpture was a marble representation of a bearded and laughing faun. It underwent a few edits before Michelangelo declared it finished, a positive thing as this is what drew the attention of Michelangelo’s famed patron, Lorenzo de Medici.

The piece was displayed in the Bargello Museum in Florence, Italy, until World War II, when it was taken to Poppi Castle for safe keeping. 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. The truck left there a week or so later. After that, the trail goes cold, and no trace of the mask has ever been found.^[6]

4 Canadian Art Heist, Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, 1972

Three men were very busy on September 4, 1972. They incapacitated several guards, tied them up, and ran away with $2 million worth of artwork, jewelry, and artifacts from the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. Among the 18 stolen paintings was a canvas from famed Dutch artist Rembrandt van Rijn.

By 1992, the Rembrandt artwork was estimated to be worth $20 million. The rest of the paintings were also valued at around $20 million. These included Landscape with Vehicles and Cattle by Jan Breughel the Elder’s students, 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.

It has been 50 years and the mystery remains unsolved—no suspects and not a single piece has been recovered. The heist is considered the largest in Canada’s history.^[7]

3 Caravaggio’s Nativity, Oratory Of San Lorenzo Palermo, 1969

In 1609, Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio painted Nativity with Saints Lawrence and Francis in Palermo, Sicily. It shows Jesus Christ in the manger after he was born. The beautiful painting was of a kind that no one in modern times had seen.

On October 17, 1969, two thieves broke into the Oratory of San Lorenzo in Palermo and made off with the Nativity. While the painting is still lost, some leads suggest that it may be with the Sicilian mafia. Recovering it sounds impossible with this information, even as the FBI is already involved.

In 2015, a replica of the Nativity was commissioned and now hangs at the altar of the Oratory of Saint Lawrence.^[8]

2 The Great Chinese Heist, 2010–2015

The only connection among several heists in different European cities between 2010 and 2015 is that the looted items were Chinese artworks and treasures. It got some people thinking: Could the Chinese government be behind the Great Chinese Heist?

It started in 2010 in Stockholm, Sweden, with burning cars on the streets. As the authorities’ attention was focused on the arson, a band of thieves rushed to the Swedish royal residence and grabbed Chinese antiques from the Chinese Pavilion. A month later, robbers stole various items from the China Collection of the KODE Museum in Bergen, Norway.

The next city was Durham in England, where thieves hit the Oriental Museum at Durham University. A museum at Cambridge University was the next target.

In 2013, thieves—it’s unclear if they were the same ones—broke into the KODE Museum again, where 22 more Chinese relics were stolen. Two years later, a group of robbers hit the Chinese Museum of the Chateau de Fontainebleau in Paris. Most of the items there were objects that French soldiers stole during the sack of Beijing’s Old Summer Palace in 1860. Among the stolen goods were porcelain vases and a mandala made of gold, turquoise, and coral. It bolstered the theory that the Chinese government just wanted their treasures back.

More robberies continued in Europe afterwards, and the targets were similar: Chinese items looted by foreign armies many years ago.^[9

1 The Tucker’s Cross Theft, 19??

Marine explorer Teddy Tucker found an emerald-studded 22-karat gold cross in 1955. The treasure was believed to be from a Spanish galleon wrecked in Bermuda in 1594. Known as Tucker’s Cross, it became the most valuable object found in a shipwreck until 1997.

Tucker sold the cross to the government of Bermuda so it would remain on the island. It was stored in the Aquarian Museum, which Tucker and his wife managed. There, the valuable artifact sat until it was discovered that it was a fake in 1975, just before a visit to the island by Queen Elizabeth. As it turns out, the cross on display was a replica made of cheap plastic. Even today, the couple has no leads on the whereabouts of the original Tucker’s Cross.^[10]