'Priceless' jewels snatched from German state museum

Robbers made off with priceless 18th century jewellery from a state museum in Dresden on Monday, police and museum directors said, in a major art heist that has shocked Germany. The thieves at dawn broke into the Green Vault at Dresden’s Royal Palace — home to around 4,000 precious objects of ivory, gold, silver and jewels — after a power cut deactivated the alarm. The stolen items included brilliant-cut diamonds that belonged to a collection of jewellery of 18th-century Saxony ruler Augustus the Strong. Museum directors had earlier feared much of three sets of diamond jewellery in the collection were snatched, but the loss turned out to be more limited than thought. “The criminals didn’t manage to take everything,” the director of Dresden’s state art collections Marion Ackermann told public broadcaster ZDF on Monday evening.