7 of the Biggest Art Heists in History

 While high-stakes museum robberies might be a crime traditionally confined to film, sometimes these high culture heists make their way into real life. Though most of these bold break-ins end in total disaster, a few painting poachers have managed to slip away with millions of dollars’ worth of artwork—without leaving a shred of evidence in their wake. 

1. The Mona Lisa Theft (1911) 
2. The Oslo Munch Museum Robbery (2004) 
3. The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum Heist (1990)
4. The Dresden Green Vault Robbery (2019)
5. Montreal Museum of Fine Arts Robbery (1972)
6. The Kunsthal Museum Heist (2012)
7. The Van Gogh Museum Heist (2002)

The Mona Lisa Theft (1911) 

On the morning of August 21, 1911, Italian decorator Vincenzo Peruggia pulled off what has been almost universally described as one of the greatest art heists in history.

Shortly after relocating to Paris from his native Italy in 1908, Peruggia found work at the Louvre as a tradesman tasked with constructing glass cases for some of the artwork at the museum (including the Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci). After slipping into the Louvre early in the morning through an employee entrance, Peruggia made his way to where the Mona Lisa was hanging and waited until the area was clear to remove the painting (alongside the glass frame he’d helped construct) from the gallery wall.

After stowing the painting in a nearby staircase, Peruggia removed it from its protective casing, wrapped the pilfered painting in a protective blanket, and left the museum the same way he entered. 

Despite the painting’s now ubiquitous image, the Mona Lisa was heretofore a widely unknown painting outside the cloistered art world. Perhaps due to its relative obscurity at the time, the painting was not noticed to have been stolen for more than a day, its theft only coming to the museum's attention when an artist copying paintings in the gallery inquired about its whereabouts. When the museum staff realized the painting had indeed been stolen, authorities were contacted, and an international hunt for da Vinci’s masterpiece ensued.

Police questioned members of the Louvre’s staff, and even apprehended artists like Pablo Picasso for questioning. Despite the investigator’s assertion that the painting would be located within days, the Mona Lisa remained missing for over two years, hidden inside Peruggia’s apartment. Hoping the heat from the investigation had finally died down, Peruggia attempted to sell the painting to a Florentine art dealer named Alfredo Geri in 1913. Rightfully suspicious of Peruggia, Geri agreed to meet with the art thief to authenticate the work and contacted the police shortly after verifying its legitimacy. 

Though Peruggia claimed he was simply acting patriotically in returning the painting to its rightful “homeland” (da Vinci’s native Italy), Peruggia was arrested almost immediately after his meeting with the art dealer. Stemming from his new status as a sort of patriotic folk hero, Peruggia was given a fairly lenient sentence of just over a year in prison for his crime. 

The Oslo Munch Museum Robbery (2004) 

On August 22, 2004, a pair of masked gunmen burst into the Munch Museum in Oslo, Norway, holding visitors and museum staff at gunpoint while they made off with Norwegian artist Edvard Munch’s iconic paintings The Scream and Madonna.

After the two men ripped the paintings from the museum’s gallery walls, they fled the scene with the help of a getaway driver waiting just outside. Just after the robbery, the Munch closed for almost an entire year while it underwent a thorough security revamp. Though all three men would be apprehended by authorities and convicted for their part in the robbery by May 2006, the paintings would remain missing until August of that year. Shockingly, both paintings were recovered by police with minimal damage, necessitating only minor cosmetic repairs. When both paintings were put back on display in September 2006, thousands of art enthusiasts flocked to the museum to welcome Munch’s masterpieces back to their proper home. 

10 years before it was stolen from Oslo’s Munch Museum, Munch’s The Scream was stolen from the Oslo National Gallery during the opening of the 1994 Winter Olympics. After making off with the masterpiece, the thieves left a mocking note for authorities, reading “Thanks for the poor security.”

Though the art thieves sought a large ransom in exchange for the painting’s safe return, Norwegian police orchestrated a sting operation in collaboration with British police to recoup the artwork. Munch’s The Scream would later sell for the reported record-breaking price of $120 million USD at an auction to private equity investor Leon Black.

The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum Heist (1990)

At around 1:00 a.m. on March 18, 1990, two men posing as police officers responding to a disturbance were admitted to Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and managed to pull off the single largest private property theft in history.

After restraining the museum’s two security personnel, the thieves spent the next hour ransacking the museum, making off with more than a dozen works of art worth an estimated half a billion dollars. Alongside works by artists like Rembrandt and Manet, the burglars snatched The Concert by Johannes Vermeer, a highly prized work by the Dutch painter estimated to be worth around $250 million. 

Less than a decade prior to the scandalizing 1990 heist, the FBI had made the museum aware of a robbery plot targeting their collection. While the museum made some security upgrades, many of the necessary modifications to their protocol were deemed cost-prohibitive and forgone. Despite an extensive investigation by the FBI, the case had a surprising dearth of physical evidence, leaving investigators with very few leads.

The case would remain cold until 1994, when an anonymous letter was sent to the museum offering to negotiate the return of the work in exchange for a sum of $2.6 million being deposited in an offshore account. Though the museum and authorities initially pursued this lead, the case went cold once again when the letter’s anonymous author failed to respond to the museum's pleas for the works’ return. 

In commemoration and remembrance of the stolen works, empty frames hang on the gallery walls where they were once displayed, and the museum has maintained the offer of a $10 million reward in exchange for information leading to the return of the works in good condition. To this day, no arrests have been made in connection with the case, and the whereabouts of the stolen artwork remain unknown. 

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The Dresden Green Vault Robbery (2019)

On the early morning of November 25, 2019, a pair of masked men set fire to a circuit breaker panel near Dresden, Germany’s Green Vault Museum, disabling nearby streetlights and the Vault’s security alarms. After prying open the barred windows to the Vault’s Jewel Room, the pair of thieves broke into the museum and stole dozens of pieces of jewelry, totalling an estimated value upwards of $120 million.

Security at the museum notified police immediately, and authorities moved quickly to establish roadblocks to prevent the robbers from getting away. Despite their efforts, the suspects had slipped away, and their getaway vehicle was found torched in a nearby parking lot. In the weeks following the robbery, German authorities began focusing their investigation on the Remmo family, a Berlin crime syndicate that had been connected to a similar robbery in 2017 at Berlin’s Bode Museum. 

In September 2021, German authorities brought charges against multiple members of the Remmo family in connection with the robbery. Through the suspects’ cooperation with the authorities, much of what the robbers had gotten away with had been recovered and returned to the Green Vault by late 2022. On May 16, 2023, five of the six suspects were convicted on charges related to the robbery and given prison sentences ranging from four to six years. 

Montreal Museum of Fine Arts Robbery (1972)

Over Labor Day Weekend in 1972, a trio of men climbed onto the roof of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts and slipped inside using a skylight under renovation. Armed and wearing ski masks, the robbers quickly rounded up the museum’s overnight security guards and left them restrained in a lecture hall while they ransacked the museum.

Originally intending to exit the museum through the same skylight they had entered, the thieves instead decided to attempt to make their escape through the museum’s side entrance, tripping an alarm and alerting the authorities. By the time Montreal police had arrived on the scene, the robbers had made off with more than 50 works, totalling an estimated value of $2 million at the time.

Despite the sensational nature of the heist, the robbery was quickly overshadowed by a terrorist attack at that year’s Summer Olympics in Munich, dampening the case’s public interest. Shortly after the robbery, the thieves made contact with the museum, returning some smaller pieces from their stash to confirm their legitimacy and initiate ransom negotiations.

Though police had attempted multiple sting operations to catch the thieves, ransom negotiations quickly broke down, and the remaining stolen art was never recovered. As the case is still considered active, police files pertaining to the robbery remain sealed to the public. 

The Kunsthal Museum Heist (2012)

At around 3:00 a.m. on October 16, 2012, a pair of thieves was able to break into the Kunsthal Museum and steal seven extremely valuable works by artists like Monet, Picasso, and Matisse in just under three minutes.

Although the pair of thieves seen on the museum’s CCTV footage had tripped the alarms and notified the authorities, they’d made their escape with the help of a getaway driver by the time police had made it to the museum. The robbers, a group of Romanian career criminals, had been breaking into homes across Rotterdam before setting their sights on the Kunsthal.

After visiting the museum on separate “dates” to get a feel of its layout and points of entry, the thieves spent some time scoping out the museum at night to see what kind of security outfit they were up against. Lucky for the thieves and unlucky for the museum, the Kunsthal had no overnight security, relying instead on its obviously lacking security system to deter potential robbers.  

Shortly after the robbers had successfully pulled off their heist, they began to search for a buyer for the stolen art (estimated to be worth upwards of $100 million if legally sold at auction). After attempting to get the paintings authenticated by a curator from a Romanian museum, the curator tipped off the police, and the thieves’ plan began to unravel.

After a bungled sting operation utilizing a client who the thieves had previously offered to sell the work to, authorities arrested two of the three thieves without having recovered the work. Panicked, the mother of one of the thieves, whose home they’d been using to conceal the artworks, claimed to have burned the paintings in an effort to destroy the evidence.

Despite this, eventually all three thieves were arrested and convicted for their role in the heist and were each given prison sentences ranging from four to six years in addition to orders of payment of restitution to the museum. Though the robber’s mother initially claimed to have burned all the stolen artwork, she later retracted this statement, and one of the paintings was mysteriously discovered under a tree in late 2018.

The Van Gogh Museum Heist (2002)

After using a ladder to access the museum’s roof, two Dutch robbers used a sledgehammer to break into the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, making off with millions of dollars’ worth of work by the beloved post-impressionist painter.

Occurring in the early hours of December 7, 2002, the thieves spent less than five minutes inside the museum, quickly lifting two Van Gogh paintings: View of the Sea at Scheveningen and Congregation Leaving the Reformed Church in Nuenen. Though the bandits made off with just two relatively small works, estimates of their worth have ranged from $30 million to upwards of $50 million. 

Using DNA evidence from a hat left at the scene of the crime, police were able to quickly link the robbery to Octave Durham, a career criminal nicknamed “The Monkey” for his climbing abilities. Following a lengthy investigation, Dutch authorities were able to arrest both Durham and his accomplice, Henk Bieslijn, in connection with the robbery.

On April 8, 2004, both men were convicted and handed prison sentences of four years despite the paintings remaining missing. Shockingly, the paintings were recovered in September 2016 after they were discovered during the raid of an Italian home belonging to the mother of Raffaele Imperiale, a prominent member of the Camorra crime family. After their recovery, the paintings were returned to the Van Gogh Museum to much fanfare.