With a hammer they wanted to steal 18.5 kg of Roman gold coins worth a quarter of a billion crowns

A 28-year-old Dutchman has gone on trial for attempting to steal a gold Roman treasure from a museum in Trier after being charged in May this year. In exchange for a reduced sentence, the man confessed and reported his two accomplices. More than 2,500 Roman coins worth more than 254 million crowns were in the robbers' sights.
Two men broke into the Rhineland Museum in Trier in October 2019 through a window from an attached scaffolding while a third guarded outside. Inside, the robbers smashed the massive door with a hammer to get at the gold coins under the protection of a bulletproof glass display case. However, they were unable to break this and were unable to steal the coins. After setting off the alarm, the three fled before police arrived.
German investigators traced the young Dutchman through DNA from a sports bag that the unsuccessful thieves left behind in the museum during their escape. He was extradited to Germany as a suspect at the end of 2020. After interrogations and overwhelming DNA evidence, the defendant confessed, but said he did not actively participate in the "operation" at the museum, he said he was just a lookout. After a plea bargain between prosecutors and defense counsel, he named two other accomplices in exchange for a lower sentence. He was therefore sentenced to a relatively light sentence ranging from 2.5 to 3.5 years in prison. The remaining thieves are still on the run.
The treasure of 2,518 aurei was discovered on 9. September 1993, when an excavator dug up a broken bronze container full of dirt and gold coins during the construction of a hospital car park. News of the extraordinary find spread with great speed in the area, and before archaeologists could properly secure the site, the excavated soil was "examined" by treasure hunters with metal detectors. Later, due to legal implications and difficulties in selling, some of the thieves returned the stolen Roman coins. Nevertheless, an estimated 100 to 200 gold coins are still floating around. One of the robbers is known to have used them to pay his bill at a local pub that night...

Archaeologists spent 20 years documenting and cataloguing the hoard. They found coins minted over the course of more than a century. The coins bear the portraits of 27 emperors and 12 members of imperial families. More than 80 previously unknown types of coins were found in the Treviri hoard, including a coinage of Didius Julianus, who ruled Rome for three months193) after he literally bought the throne when the Praetorian Guard sold it to the highest bidder after the murder of Pertinax.
The oldest coin dates from the reign of Nero in 63/64 AD, the youngest from the reign of Septimius Severus between 193 and 196 AD. Because of the date of the youngest coin, archaeologists believe the hoard was deposited at this time - probably the end of the civil war, when the city was besieged by the troops of Clodius Albinus in 197, or in fear of Germanic invaders. Trevir was in ancient times the capital of the province of Gallia Belgica. With growing prosperity and political importance, the city soon found itself on the list of frequent Germanic raids. The monumental Porta Nigra gate and the defensive walls of the city were built between 180 and 200 AD during the reign of Emperor Marcus Aurelius.

The 18.5 kg of gold coins at the time represented the equivalent of a year's pay for 130 Roman soldiers. It was almost certainly not the treasure of an individual, but probably part of an official treasury. The largest Roman gold hoard to date is a set of 12,000 gold coins, which is the centrepiece of the collection of the Rhineland Museum in Trier. None of the treasures are currently on display, and the museum is working on a more sophisticated security system.

Roman Nemec

Sources: dw.com, thehistoryblog.com, nltimes.nl