The jewels stolen from inside the Hermitage Museum
Saint Petersburg, Russia, 2006
This case is a work of fiction. The characters, names, places and events in the game do not portray real people. The account below is a factual summary, based on public sources, of the case that served as inspiration.
In 2006, an inventory at the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg found 221 items missing: jewelry, enamels, icons and imperial objects from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. There had been no break-in. The pieces had left little by little, over the years, from the department a curator was responsible for.
The curator had died the previous year, at her workplace, and could not defend herself; her husband was convicted in 2007 of selling the pieces to antiques dealers. The case led to an inspection of every museum in Russia.
Sources
In the game
The Imperial Egg
Fontanka Palace Museum, Saint Petersburg, 9:10 pm. In the restoration workshop, the curator discovered that the Winter Swan Egg, an imperial jewel from 1911, is a replica: the rubies are glass.
The game borrows the theft carried out from within, by a trusted person, over months and without a break-in. The swap for a replica, the characters and the outcome are fiction.
