They headed directly to the East Asian gallery, where this exceptional piece, produced in the imperial workshops of Jingdezhen, in southern China stood in a glass display case.  Despite a double alarm system that activated and triggered the standard response from security staff, the intruders were in and out of the building in roughly six minutes, taking only this singular jar from its pedestal and leaving the rest of the collection untouched.  By the time local police, alerted by the guarding team, arrived, the burglars and their prize were already gone. 

For Mariemont, it was the first theft of this kind. For museum security specialists, the modus operandi looked uncomfortably familiar. Since 2010, museums in England, Sweden, Norway, the Netherlands and Germany have suffered targeted thefts of high-value Chinese ceramics, often in fast, well-organised raids against a single masterpiece or a small group of objects. 

Ransom, Roubaix and a police sting

The story might have ended there, with a masterpiece disappearing into a private collection, if the thieves had not tried to cash in on their prize. In the weeks after the burglary, the museum was reported received a ransom demand of 2 million euros in exchange for the safe return of the jar. 

Belgian and French police, already cooperating on the case, used the demand to set up a sting operation. Investigators from the French Brigade de recherche et d'intervention and the brigade de répression du banditisme in Lille worked with their Belgian counterparts to organise a fake handover in Roubaix, in northern France. On 28 May 2024 the undercover officer travelled to a small parking area, apparently alone and carrying a bag that was supposed to contain the ransom money. 

When two young men arrived by car to collect the bag, they found themselves surrounded within seconds by dozens of plain-clothes officers. At almost the same moment, police recovered the wine jar a short distance away and arrested additional suspects from France and Belgium. In total, multiple individuals, several already known to law enforcement, were taken into custody. The jar’s lid had been damaged during the theft, but the object itself had survived. 

For the museum, the recovery was described as an “unbelievable” outcome and a near-miraculous success, given the value, rarity and recognisability of the piece. 

Monday's Charleroi court decision

On 12 January 2026, the Tribunal correctionnel de Charleroi delivered its judgment in the Mariemont case. Nine of the ten defendants prosecuted in connection with the theft and ransom plot were convicted and received prison sentences ranging from 18 months with suspension to 4 years of effective imprisonment. 

The court recognised the organised nature of the operation. The thieves had entered by force in the middle of the night, gone straight to a unique object classed as a cultural treasure, and then attempted to extort a multimillion-euro ransom. The pattern matched the broader trend identified by police and cultural heritage experts: structured criminal groups targeting specific items, in this case Chinese imperial ceramics, in museums. 

The Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles, as owner of the museum and the jar, joined the proceedings as a civil party. It sought 22 million euros in damages, reflecting both the market value of the Ming masterpiece and the harm caused by the damage to the object during the theft as well as staff costs.  The court, however, granted only a provisional award of one euro, noting that the community would need to provide more detailed expert evidence to quantify the exact extent of the damage to such a rare and almost incomparable work. 

The tribunal did, however, accept that the jar had indeed suffered harm as a result of the crime. In addition, the court awarded compensation for material losses, costs linked to replacement staff during sick leave, and moral damages suffered by two guards and the museum director, whose professional and personal lives were directly affected by the burglary. 

The Fédération now has the option to develop a fuller damages case, supported by conservation assessments and comparative valuation, if it wishes to return to court.

A case that resonates beyond one museum

The Mariemont burglary is more than a spectacular “vase heist” with a satisfying police sting at the end. It sits within a troubling pattern in which museums holding Asian ceramics, especially Ming and Qing dynasty wares, have become targets by organised groups who know exactly what to take and how quickly to get out. 

Other recent museum thefts with similar modus operandi have been recorded, including at the Keramiekmuseum Princessehof in Leeuwarden in February 2023, the Museum für Ostasiatische Kunst Köln in Cologne in September 2023, and the Musée National Adrien Dubouché in September 2025. 

The case also underlines the vulnerability of small and medium-sized institutions that hold objects of global importance. Mariemont’s Ming jar is not just a Belgian treasure, but one of a handful of such imperial pieces in Western collections. Its theft and partial damage show how much is at stake in a matter of minutes when a museum is treated as a soft target for high-value crime. 

Finally, the Charleroi judgment illustrates an unresolved tension in cultural heritage crime: courts can and do punish the perpetrators, but calculating meaningful compensation for damage to unique works remains extremely difficult. No insurance payment or civil award can fully restore a sixteenth century imperial jar to its pre-theft condition. That difficulty does not reduce the responsibility of criminals who treat cultural property as a commodity, but it complicates how legal systems adjudicate the true cost of their actions.

In Mariemont, the jar will eventually return to display, accompanied by a new chapter in its history: five centuries of imperial banquets, a century in a Belgian collection, six minutes in the hands of thieves and, thanks to careful police work and a recent court decision, a second life as a case study in how fragile and how resilient cultural heritage can be.

 By Lynda Albertson