{"id":28901,"date":"2025-01-26T06:15:02","date_gmt":"2025-01-26T11:15:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/?p=28901"},"modified":"2025-01-26T06:15:02","modified_gmt":"2025-01-26T11:15:02","slug":"thieves-use-explosives-to-steal-gold-masterpieces-from-dutch-museum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/2025\/01\/26\/thieves-use-explosives-to-steal-gold-masterpieces-from-dutch-museum\/","title":{"rendered":"Thieves use explosives to steal gold ‘masterpieces’ from Dutch museum"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\n

Four ancient gold artefacts were stolen from a Dutch museum in an overnight raid in the early hours of Saturday morning.<\/b><\/p>\n

Thieves used explosives to blast their way into the Drents Museum in Assen, which was hosting an exhibition of priceless Romanian jewellery made from gold and silver.<\/p>\n

They left with three Dacian spiral bracelets and the exhibit’s central piece – the strikingly decorated Helmet of Cotofenesti, which was crafted almost 2,500 years ago.<\/p>\n

Romania’s ministry of culture has promised to take all possible steps to recover the stolen items, which had been loaned to the Dutch museum from Bucharest.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n

Drents Museum director Harry Tupan said staff were “intensely shocked” by the burglary, which he said was the biggest incident in its 170-year history.<\/p>\n

Police were called to the scene after reports of an explosion at 03:45 local time (04:45 GMT) on Saturday.<\/p>\n

Officers carried out forensic investigation and reviewed CCTV footage throughout the day.<\/p>\n

Police are also investigating a burning vehicle which was found on a nearby road, which they suspect may be linked to the burglary.<\/p>\n

“A possible scenario is that the suspects switched to another vehicle in the vicinity of the fire,” a Dutch police statement said.<\/p>\n

No arrests have been made, but authorities suspect multiple individuals were involved. Police have called global policing agency Interpol to help with the investigation.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\"The<\/a>
The Helmet of Cotofenesti, pictured in the National Museum of Romanian History, is strikingly decorated with mythological beasts and a pair of eyes<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A statement from the museum said four “archaeological masterpieces” were taken, including the Cotofenesti helmet, which dates from around 450 BC, and three ancient Dacian royal bracelets.<\/p>\n

All four stolen items are of huge cultural significance to Romania, with the Helmet of Cotofenesti considered a national treasure.<\/p>\n

In the late 1990s, 24 bracelets from the same era were dug up by treasure hunters and sold abroad.<\/p>\n

The Romanian state worked for years to get them back from collectors in Austria, Germany, France, the UK and the United States.<\/p>\n

Source: bbc.co.uk<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Four ancient gold artefacts were stolen from a Dutch museum in an overnight raid in the early hours of Saturday morning. Thieves used explosives to blast their way into the Drents Museum in Assen, which […]<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":28903,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2,6],"tags":[10973,10972,9480,8971,5180],"class_list":{"0":"post-28901","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"category-world","9":"tag-assen","10":"tag-drents-museum","11":"tag-jewelry-theft","12":"tag-museum-robbery","13":"tag-romania","14":"pmpro-has-access"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28901","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28901"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28901\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28904,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28901\/revisions\/28904"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28903"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28901"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28901"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28901"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}