Dramatic footage captures burglars smash open cases to steal jewellery worth up to €1billion from a museum .
The security clip shows the crooks repeatedly batter through the cabinet in The Green Vault in Dresden, east Germany, today.
The raiders, are seen wearing torches on their heads, swinging axes at the glass cases.
Two black-clothed burglars are pictured running into the dark vault and targeting different sections of the secured cabinets.
In one of the world's biggest-ever heists, the hooded thugs also switched off a power supply and sneaked into the building through a tiny hole.
and now police believe the raid is linked to a huge coin theft more than two years ago.
Officers told local media the gang may also be responsible for taking items worth $4.5million (£3.5m) from a museum in Berlin in 2017.
The jewellery ensembles in Dresden were commissioned by Saxony's former ruler Augustus the Strong in an 18th-century show of power.
Experts at the museum, who once boasted that their collection was "as secure as Fort Knox", said the value of the items stolen was "immeasurable" and pleaded with the crooks not to destroy them.
"We're dealing with priceless artistic and cultural treasures.
"We cannot give a value because it is impossible to sell," Marion Ackermann, the museum director, said.
Dirk Syndram, another director at the museum, told Bild : "Nowhere in any other collection in Europe have jewels or sets of jewels been preserved in this form and quantity.
"The value is really in the ensemble."
The gang fled in an an Audi A6 after the raid.
Police have since found a car matching its description burned out in an underground parking lot in the city.
A notice on the museum's website this morning states only that the building is closed today for 'organisational reasons'. It is not expected to re-open before Wednesday.
Augustus the Strong competed with French monarch Louis XIV to assemble the most extravagant jewellery.
The probe continues.
