Valuable Siamese crown stolen from French museum
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A GOLD replica of Thai King Rama IV's crown - encrusted with more than 2,000 rubies - was among artefacts stolen from the Chateau de Fontainebleau, just south of Paris, early on Sunday, along with a dozen other precious artefacts from eastern Asia.
The Siamese crown was offered to Napoleon III in 1861. It was among artefacts collected by Napoleon’s wife Eugenie, who placed them in her museum, which was created in 1863.
The Art Newspaper reported that the burglary took place before 6am. “The thieves were very determined. They knew what they were doing and exactly what they wanted,” the chateau’s president Jean-Francois Hebert told the online paper.
The thieves smashed the glass of the display cabinets with chairs and other objects from the Asian collection and, in a crude attempt to cover their tracks, used a fire extinguisher to spread carbonic “snow” over the site.
The alarm went off and the culprits were filmed, but when the night watch arrived at the gallery, they had already escaped. The raid took less than seven minutes. Hebert described the theft as “deeply traumatic” for his institution and staff.
The website quoted Hebert as saying that the Siamese crown was a replica of the original specially made for Napoleon III. The thieves also took an 18th-century Chinese cloisonne enamelled chimera and a rare Tibetan mandala.
The Fontainebleau theft is the most serious incident at a French national museum for many years. The burglary follows the recovery in Newark, New Jersey, late last week of a Picasso stolen from the Centre Pompidou in Paris a decade ago.
Meanwhile, Culture Minister Veera Rojpochanarat said the replica of the Siamese crown was made from gold and decorated with 233 jewels, 2,298 rubies, 46 pieces of jade and nine pearls. He said it was now up to French authorities to retrieve the stolen items.
