Jewels Belonging To Qatari Royal Family Stolen From Exhibition in Venice

Police in Venice confirmed on Wednesday that pieces of jewellery belonging to the Qatari Royal Family were stolen from an exhibition at the Doge’s Palace, or Palazzo Ducale, on Wednesday morning.

A pair of earrings and a “jewelled golden brooch”, worth a declared 30,000€ but believed to have an actual value in the millions of Euros, were stolen from a display case by two men, who managed to disarm the exhibition’s alarm systems. The jewels were part of a 270-piece exhibition entitled ‘Treasures of the Mughals and the Maharajas’ assembled by The Al Thani Collection.

Vito Gagliardi, the city’s police chief, said that the thieves were “very skilled professionals, who got away with it even though the building and the rooms were kitted out with very advanced technological systems” and it was vital that investigators determined exactly how they managed to cause the alarm system to go off on a delay (allowing the thieves ti escape into the crowds of tourists). Detectives from Rome have been called in to assist.

The police said that the pieces “would be nearly impossible to sell on the black market” because of their unique nature, and that they “therefore believe the gems may be removed from the jewellery and sold separately.”

The pieces, which have been described as items of lesser historical value than the main pieces in the collection, were stolen on the last day of the exhibition, which had opened in September and has already been shown in New York, Paris, London and Koka. The exhibition is made of pieces from The Al Thani Collection, a “private collection of exceptional Indian and Indian-inspired gems and jewellery spanning four hundred years, from the Mughal period to the present-day.”

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Pieces of the exhibition when on show in New York City

Filed under Qatar
Tagged Exhibition, Italy, Jewellery, The Al Thani Collection.

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