Thieves Calmly Steal All 88 Chairs From a Maastricht Museum Café Terrace
Thieves stole all 88 designer chairs from the terrace of the Ipanema café at Maastricht's Bonnefanten Museum, worth at least 21,500 euros, despite the chairs being cabled down and around 25 cameras.
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It is not every day that a café loses its entire terrace to thieves, but that is what happened in Maastricht last weekend. All 88 chairs were stolen from the terrace of the Ipanema café at the Bonnefanten Museum, in a theft that has left the café’s manager baffled.
Carried off in the small hours
The chairs, worth at least 21,500 euros, disappeared at around 4am on Monday. What makes the case so striking is how relaxed the culprits appear to have been. “Our camera footage shows multiple thieves, completely at ease, stacking all 88 chairs and walking back and forth calmly several times,” café manager Freek Joosten told the regional broadcaster L1 Nieuws. “As a business owner, you think: how is this possible?”
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Cabled down, and on camera
That question is a fair one, because the chairs were not simply left out in the open. They had been tied down with iron cables, and the terrace sits in a spot that is anything but hidden. “About 25 cameras are hanging here between the provincial government building and the Bonnefanten,” Joosten said. “And yet they still manage to do it.”
The thieves were also selective. They left the tables behind, but, alongside the chairs, made off with a waste container. Adding to the frustration, the terrace had only just been renovated.
Keeping the terrace open
Rather than leave customers standing, Joosten has borrowed chairs from a catering company so the café can carry on serving guests while it works out what to do next. He has appealed on Facebook for any witnesses, or anyone with information, to come forward.
For now, the motive is anyone’s guess. Whether the haul of designer chairs was destined for resale or something else entirely, taking 88 of them, one calm trip at a time, from under two dozen cameras is a bold piece of work.