Priceless ancient golden helmet stolen from a Dutch museum is recovered

ASSEN, Netherlands (AP) — A priceless ancient golden helmet from Romania stolen last year from a museum in the Netherlands has been recovered, Dutch authorities said Thursday.

Under the guard of balaclava-wearing clad police, prosecutors unveiled the 2,500-year-old Cotofenesti helmet during a news conference in the eastern Dutch city of Assen.

Two of three missing golden armbands were also recovered as part of a deal prosecutors reached with three men arrested for the heist shortly after it occurred. Their trial hasn’t started yet.

“We are incredibly pleased,” Corien Fahner of the prosecution service told the crowd of reporters. “It has been a roller coaster. Especially for Romania, but also for employees of the Drents Museum.”

Fahner said the search for the remaining armband would continue.

The helmet, considered a cultural icon of Romania, was on loan to the Drents Museum when it was nabbed more than a year ago along with a number of other objects.

The theft shocked Romania, whose national museum loaned the artifacts for an exhibition. The then-President Klaus Iohannis said at the time that the artifacts had “exceptional cultural and historical importance” for Romanian heritage and identity, and that their disappearance had “a strong emotional and symbolic impact on society.”

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Thieves used a homemade firework bomb and sledgehammer to break into the museum. Grainy security video distributed by police after the raid appeared to show three people opening a museum door with a large crowbar, after which an explosion is seen. Within days of the break in, three people were arrested by police.