The Saliera taken from the Kunsthistorisches Museum

The last visitors left the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna at 2:00 on the morning of 11 May 2003, after a night of music. At 3:55 a motion sensor in the picture gallery on the first floor raised an alarm. According to a chronology from the Austrian news agency APA, published by ORF, the three guards on duty reset it within the allowed time. They did not go to look, and the lights and video system stayed off. At about 8:20 the head attendant found a broken window and a broken display case. Only then was the police called. The thief had climbed scaffolding on the facade.

He had taken the Saliera, a table salt cellar. Benvenuto Cellini, an Italian goldsmith, made it in Paris between 1540 and 1543 for King Francis I of France. It is gold, partly enamelled, with figures of Neptune and the earth goddess Tellus. The museum says it is the only gold work by Cellini that survives. Austria-Forum, a reference site, reports that France gave it in 1570 to Archduke Ferdinand II of Tyrol, who kept it at Ambras Castle. It reached Vienna in the 19th century. The guards were suspended.

In August 2003 a letter to the museum’s insurer, Uniqa, demanded 5 million euros. It came with crumbs said to come from the object. Later letters asked for 10 million euros and threatened to melt the Saliera down. In autumn 2005 the sender agreed to hand it back, then called off the meeting by text message. A camera had filmed him buying the mobile phone.

On 20 January 2006 police released the picture. Friends of the man saw the likeness, and he came forward that day. He was Robert Mang, 50, who worked on alarm systems in Vienna. After he confessed, he led police on 21 January to a wood at Brand, near Zwettl, about 90 kilometres from Vienna. The Saliera lay under snow. The Guardian attributes to Ernst Geiger, head of Vienna criminal police, the detail that it was in a metal box and had been kept in a suitcase under his bed. On 22 January the Interior Minister handed it back to the museum.

Mang’s legal status changed several times. On 7 September 2006 a Vienna court sentenced him to four years. He called the theft a prank, and the prosecutor appealed. Reports differ on the ransom threat. AP and the BBC say he was cleared of attempted extortion for lack of proof. Austrian reports say he was convicted of aggravated burglary and attempted coercion. On 6 March 2007 the Supreme Court annulled the verdict for a legal error. It held that the threat to melt the Saliera was attempted aggravated extortion, and it ordered a new trial.

At the retrial in June 2007 Mang was convicted of aggravated burglary and attempted aggravated extortion and sentenced to five years. Vienna.at and Die Presse give 26 June. The ORF chronology says July. He was released early on parole in autumn 2008.

The Saliera had scratches from glass splinters and poor storage, and some enamel was chipped. Austria-Forum reports three weeks of restoration. Its value is an estimate, not a price: the insurance value was 50 million euros, and the judge at the retrial cited at least 36 million. The museum’s Kunstkammer, its collection of treasures, reopened on 28 February 2013 after ten years. The Saliera is on view there, in Room XXIX.