The crown of the Siamese King offered in 1861 to Napoleon III in the Château de Fontainebleau was stolen in the early hours of Sunday morning, 1 March, along with around 15 other precious artefacts from eastern Asia.
The burglary took place before 6am at the palace 60 kilometres south of Paris. “The thieves were very determined. They knew what they were doing and exactly what they wanted,” the château's president Jean-François Hébert told The Art Newspaper. 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 Siamese crown was a replica of the original specially made for Napoleon III. The thieves also took an 18th-century Chinese cloisonné enameled chimera and a rare Tibetan mandala.
The Fontainebleau theft is the most serious incident in 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.
The Fontainebleau palace itself was attacked by a gang 20 years ago; two thirds of around a dozen objects taken from the Napoleon Gallery were later recovered in the Netherlands and Belgium by the French national office for the fight against Trafficking of Cultural Property (OCBC). Thanks to the work of this brigade, art thefts in France have decreased by 80%. However, the resources available to the OCBC and deep cuts to museum budgets have raised fears of a new surge in art crimes.
The Chinese Museum of the Château de Fontainebleau was decorated in 1863 by Empress Eugenie, Napoleon III's wife, just two years after the mission from Siam (modern-day Thailand) had been received at the palace with great pomp. The Empress mixed furniture and works of art from all over eastern Asia, including diplomatic gifts and objects taken from the Peking Summer Palace in 1861, after it was ransacked by French and British soldiers.