Thieves Pulled Off Another Shocking Art Heist in France. This Time, They Took a 330-Pound Bronze Book Cover Designed by Salvador Dalí

The volume, “Livre de l’Apocalypse,” was a “masterpiece” collaboration between 14 artists and writers. It is one of the heaviest and most expensive books ever made

Christian Thorsberg | Daily Correspondent

October 8, 2026 9:00 a.m.

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Another flagrant museum heist has rocked France. On Sunday night or Monday morning, thieves stole an enormous bronze book cover designed by Salvador Dalí from a small contemporary art collection in the town of Issoire in central France.

The cover belongs to a massive book titled Livre de l’Apocalypse. The work was the collective achievement of seven artists and seven writers who, between 1958 and 1961, were recruited by French publisher Joseph Forêt to interpret and illustrate parts of the Book of Revelation, the canonical last book of the New Testament. These leading creatives—including Ossip Zadkine, Léonard Foujita, Jean Cocteau and Jean Giono—contributed 150 scroll-sized pages of text and biblical scenes that took more than 2,000 hours to complete, according to the Telegraph’s Henry Samuel.

Dalí’s cover leaves a fittingly grand first impression. He created it using a now-lost wax casting technique. Featuring a prominent crucifix, it is made from a constellation of materials, including bronze, gemstones, pearls, forks and seashells. Considered the most expensive book in the world at the time of its creation, the work is likewise famed for its enormous heft. It weighs roughly 463 pounds, with the cover alone tipping the scales at 330 pounds.

“It is a monumental work, a masterpiece, unique in the world,” Christian Karoutzos, the book’s owner, who runs an art restoration company and contemporary art gallery in Issoire, tells Olivier Vidal and Christelle Marquès of ICI Pays d’Auvergne, a French radio station. “France was murdered last night. French heritage was murdered.”

The book’s cover and several parchments were on display at Karoutzos’ small private contemporary art center when an unknown number of thieves forced their way through an exterior gate and demolished the book’s plexiglass display case. “They arrived like vandals. They smashed everything,” Karoutzos tells La Montagne’s David Allignon.

Though all of the book’s parchments were left untouched, authorities remain baffled as to how the theft of such a heavy artwork was carried out so seamlessly.

Valued at 2 million francs at the time of its creation—about $408,000 in 1961 dollars and $4.5 million in today’s money—the book is considered priceless by many for its history and cultural significance. Issoire Mayor Bertrand Barraud described it as “the work of a lifetime” and called its loss “incalculable,” according to Euronews’ Christina Molle.

“It has significant artistic value in and of itself, far greater than the individual value of each of the objects that make it up,” Jean-Christophe Castelain, editor-in-chief of the Journal des Arts, tells France24 in a translated interview. “What thief would be interested in an object that weighs 210 kilos? I’ll leave that question open.”

For more than a decade after its completion in 1961, the book toured nearly 150 exhibitions around the world, including a stop at the French pavilion at the 1964 World’s Fair in Queens, New York.

“On exhibit will be a huge quarter‐ton volume, L’Apocalypse, a French translation of the Revelation of St. John the Divine,” the New York Times’ Walter Carlson reported at the time. “The volume was insured for $1 million for its trip from France. Admission will be charged to see it.”

Karoutzos bought the massive book in 2003 for “several million euros,” as he tells Le Figaro’s Alix Vermande. The tome’s previous owners had intended to divide it up and sell the separate pieces.

The heist is the latest in a series of high-profile art thefts carried out across Europe in the past few months. In September, thieves stole four Pierre-Auguste Renoir paintings worth an estimated $2.5 million from a museum on the French Riviera. In August, 3,000-year-old Bronze Age artifacts were looted from Villena, Spain; that same month, four Renaissance works by Antonello da Messina were taken from a museum in Sicily.

Christian Thorsberg is an environmental writer and photographer from Chicago. His work, which often centers on freshwater issues, climate change and subsistence, has appeared in Circle of Blue, Sierra magazine, Discover magazine and Alaska Sporting Journal.