VALUABLE RELICS, brought from a Hong Kong museum for a visiting exhibit here, were stolen from China’s famed Forbidden City, the heavily guarded former home of the country’s emperors.
Seven art pieces made of gold, which were on loan from the Hong Kong-based Liang Yi Museum, were stolen on Sunday from the Palace Museum, located inside the Forbidden City, Feng Nai’en, the spokesman of the Palace Museum, said.
The missing items, which date from the early 20th century, included small Western-style make-up cases encrusted with jewels.
Feng Nai’en offered an apology to the Hong Kong-based museum saying that his museum bears an “un-shirkable responsibility for this regretful incident”.
Feng told media here on Wednesday that a museum staff member had found and questioned a “suspicious” man in the museum on Sunday night when the incident happened. However, the man fled when the worker called museum authorities to report the situation.
The museum then mobilised all available personnel, including the armed police, to search the museum for the missing man, he said.
During their search, they found that several pieces of art were missing. Two of the missing pieces were recovered nearby and were slightly damaged.
Seven items are still missing, official Chinese news agency Xinhua quoted the police as saying.
Feng said the theft shows that some security facilities inside the museum might “have some problems.”