On the night of January 24 to 25, the Drenthe Museum in Assen (Netherlands) was the victim of a violent robbery. Around 3:45 a.m., the thieves entered the museum using explosives, damaging the premises. They took away four antique pieces loaned by the National History Museum of Bucharest (Romania) on the occasion of the exhibition “Dacia, kingdom of gold and silver”, dedicated to the ancient kingdom north of the Danube.
Romanian Foreign Minister Emil Hurezeanu stressed “heritage and symbolic importance” stolen items, as well as “the emotion that their disappearance arouses throughout the country”. One of the centerpieces of the exhibition, the golden helmet of Cotofenesti, dating from 450 BC, has notably disappeared. This helmet, predating the Roman era and contemporary with classical Greece, is a jewel, underlined the historian Dimitri Tilloi-d’Ambrosi.
One of 3 stolen gold bracelets, from Sarmizegetusa Regia, an ancient Dacian city today in Romania.
© Ing. Marius Amarie
Founded in 1854 as the Provincial Museum of Antiquities of Drenthe, the museum had never experienced such violent incidents before. The director of the museum, Harry Tupan, deplored “a dark day for the Assen Museum and the National History Museum of Romania in Bucharest. We are deeply shocked by the events of last night. In its 170 years of existence, there has never been such a serious incident. We also feel great sadness towards our Romanian colleagues. »
No suspects have been arrested to date. A burnt car, which could be linked to the perpetrators of the theft, has been found.