--- title: International Museum Day: 5 Best Heists in Museum History description: Talk about a sinking feeling in your stomach canonical: https://time.com/103212/the-5-best-museum-heists-in-history/ author: Charlotte Alter article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2014-05-18T16:42:38.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-04-13T07:09:44.466Z og:title: In Honor of International Museum Day, Here Are the 5 Best Heists in Museum History og:description: Talk about a sinking feeling in your stomach og:url: https://time.com/103212/the-5-best-museum-heists-in-history/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltbecf6e66f62eeacb/69868ff43bc999001e1a3899/477568379.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: Travel Destination: Paris og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: In Honor of International Museum Day, Here Are the 5 Best Heists in Museum History twitter:description: Talk about a sinking feeling in your stomach twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltbecf6e66f62eeacb/69868ff43bc999001e1a3899/477568379.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # The 5 Best Museum Heists in History  by [Charlotte Alter](https://time.com/author/charlotte-alter/)  ## Charlotte Alter Senior Correspondent May 18, 2014 4:42 PM UTC  Visitors take pictures of Leonardo da Vinci 'Mona Lisa' inside the Louvre museum on Feb. 28, 2014 in Paris. Visitors take pictures of Leonardo da Vinci 'Mona Lisa' inside the Louvre museum on Feb. 28, 2014 in Paris.Christian Marquardt—Getty Images  by [Charlotte Alter](https://time.com/author/charlotte-alter/)  ## Charlotte Alter Senior Correspondent May 18, 2014 4:42 PM UTC In honor of [International Museum Day](http://icom.museum/events/international-museum-day/), we collected the five best museum heists in history. Just thank your lucky stars you weren’t a museum director during any of these thefts. 1) [**The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, The United States:**](http://www.gardnermuseum.org/resources/theft)On March 18, 1990, two thieves disguised as Boston Police officers demanded entrance to the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. They told the guard on patrol that they were responding to a disturbance, then drew him away from the alarm button and asked him to call his partner. The thieves then handcuffed both of them and threw them in the basement, where they duct-taped their hands and feet to pipes. The bandits then stole around $500 million worth of priceless art, the largest art heist in history. Priceless works like Vermeer’s _The Concert,_ Rembrandt’s _Storm on the Sea of Galilee,_ and Manet’s _Chez Tortoni_ were taken, never to be found again. Empty frames currently hang in some rooms of the Gardner museum where the paintings originally hung, and tourists visit to see the scene of the crime. 2) [**The Stockholm Museum, Sweden:**](http://abcnews.go.com/International/story?id=81873) Armed burglars stole $30 million worth of art by Renoir and Rembrandt from the Stockholm Museum on December 22, 2000\. They staged two car explosions nearby to distract police, then a gunman with a semiautomatic terrorized the museum while his accomplishes grabbed a Rembrandt self-portrait and two Renoirs. Then the thieves escaped in a [small boat.](http://www.theguardian.com/world/2000/dec/23/arttheft.art) 3) [**The Kunstahl Museum, The Netherlands:**](http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/kunsthal-art-heist-seven-masterpieces-1382588) Romanian gang members stole seven paintings by Picasso, Matisse, Gaugin and Monet in under three minutes from the Kunhstahl Museum in Rotterdam on October 16, 2012\. The thieves got away with the artworks, worth more than $24 million, even though they tripped the small museum’s alarm system — probably because the small museum had no guards. Last year, the [mother](http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2013/jul/17/dutch-art-heist-paintings-burned) of one of the alleged thieves claimed to have burned the paintings, perhaps to protect her son from prosecution. Olga Dogaru’s son was the alleged ringleader of the heist, and his and his accomplices had already been arrested. Dogaru first buried the paintings in different locations, then burned them so the police could never find them. The two thieves have been [sentenced ](http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/11/26/247362218/art-thieves-sentenced-to-6-years-for-dutch-museum-heist)to 6-8 years in prison. 4) [**National Museum of Anthropology, Mexico:**](http://articles.latimes.com/1985-12-27/news/mn-25412%5F1%5Fmexico-city-museum-stolen) Robbers stole 140 precious objects from Mexico’s National Museum of Anthropology on Christmas Eve, 1985, in the largest heist of pre-Colombian objects in history. The bandits picked a sleepy time when they knew the guards would be distracted by holiday cheer, and grabbed several gold, turquoise, and jade objects, as well as an [obsidian monkey-shaped-vase ](http://www.forbes.com/2008/02/12/art-theft-museums-biz-cx%5Faf%5F0212artheists.html)worth over $20 million. Most of the stolen objects were very small and easy to transport, making them especially difficult to track down. 5)[**The Louvre, France:**](http://www.npr.org/2011/07/30/138800110/the-theft-that-made-the-mona-lisa-a-masterpiece)Leonardo da Vinci’s _Mona Lisa_ is now the most famous painting in the Louvre, but it wasn’t always that way. In fact, getting stolen might have been the best thing that ever happened to this tiny Renaissance portrait. On August 21, 1911, three Italian handymen hid in a supply closet overnight in order to sneak into the museum and steal the Mona Lisa. One of them, [Vincenzo Perugia,](http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/11/26/247362218/art-thieves-sentenced-to-6-years-for-dutch-museum-heist) was the man who had installed the protective glass over the _Mona Lisa_ in the first place. The theft was all over the French newspapers, since many people feared that German or American businessmen were buying up all the good art from their museums. The painting became so famous that he couldn’t sell it without getting caught. So he hid it in the false bottom of his trunk until over two years later, when he finally tried to sell the painting. Of course, the police showed up, Perugia was arrested, and the painting was returned, more famous than ever. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/103212/the-5-best-museum-heists-in-history/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/103212/the-5-best-museum-heists-in-history/"},"headline":"The 5 Best Museum Heists in History","datePublished":"2014-05-18T16:42:38.000Z","dateModified":"2026-04-13T07:09:44.466Z","description":"Talk about a sinking feeling in your stomach","url":"https://time.com/103212/the-5-best-museum-heists-in-history/","keywords":["Newsfeed","Living","Art","museums"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltbecf6e66f62eeacb/69868ff43bc999001e1a3899/477568379.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Charlotte Alter","jobTitle":"Senior Correspondent","url":"https://time.com/author/charlotte-alter/"}],"articleSection":"","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltbecf6e66f62eeacb/69868ff43bc999001e1a3899/477568379.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"Travel Destination: Paris","caption":"Travel Destination: Paris","creditText":"Christian Marquardt—Getty Images","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/tag/time-section-newsfeed/","name":"Newsfeed"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/103212/the-5-best-museum-heists-in-history/","name":"The 5 Best Museum Heists in History"}}]}] ```