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The Green Vault in Dresden’s Royal Palace is one of the most famous treasure chambers in Europe. On November 25, 2019, burglars needed only a few minutes to raid it.
The break-in at dawn
At around 5 a.m., the thieves set fire to a nearby circuit-breaker panel, which cut the power in the area. Then they broke into the museum with a hydraulic cutting tool.
Security footage shows two men in the jewel room smashing display cases with what looks like an axe. According to Artnet, they were gone again in less than 10 minutes.
The loot: jewels worth about 113 million euros. Among them were the Dresden White, a 49-carat diamond, and the breast star of the Polish Order of the White Eagle, which once belonged to the king of Poland.
Coming home after three years
Then, in December 2022, came the twist: during talks with prosecutors, lawyers for the defendants revealed where a large part of the loot was. Police recovered 31 items in Berlin, including the breast star and a diamond-studded sword.
In 2023, five men were sentenced to several years in prison. Since 2024, the returned jewels have been back in their old spots in the Green Vault, some of them damaged.
Bonus fact: Several pieces are still missing, including a large breast bow belonging to Queen Amalie Auguste, set with 611 small diamonds.
And the Dresden White? It sits on an epaulette that has also vanished. Nobody knows where the 49-carat stone is.
The treasure chamber is almost complete again. Its most famous stone just hasn’t checked back in yet.