Art of the Heist

Klimt’s Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer was one of the most famous paintings of the twentieth century. But in March 1938 it was seized by the Nazis. The golden portrait, commissioned by Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer of his wife, was one of six Klimts taken by the Germans.

In 1994 the head of Scotland Yard's Art squad was called to the British Museum to investigate a case of suspected stolen Egyptian artefacts.

Two Rubens paintings are lifted from a tiny gallery in a small town in northern Spain by a mysterious robber. One of pictures turns up in Stockholm. The robber is arrested and convicted but escapes and disappears.

On a summers day in 1911 a man walked into the Louvre, took the Mona Lisa off the wall and walked out. He had stolen the world's most famous painting and thousands of people queued to see the empty space the painting had left.

More than two hundred items with an estimated value of $5million, including jewellery and precious enamels, were discovered missing during a routine inventory check at the Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg.

In 1988 a glittering golden headdress was looted from an ancient tomb in the desert of northern Peru – and disappeared. The octopus headdress with eight Medusa like tentacles belonged to one of the Moche lords a sophisticated culture that pre dated the Incas by 1000 years.

The Disappeared vanished from the National Art Gallery in Buenos Aires. At the time Argentina was ruled by a ruthless military junta responsible for the torture and death of thousands of ‘disappeared’ members of the opposition.

It’s four in the morning in the centre of Vienna. An alarm goes off at the seventh floor window of the Museum of Art History but the security guards don’t react. The next day one of the most important gold sculptures from the Renaissance is discovered stolen. It’s insurance value is a cool £35 million.