Thieves steal Bronze Age artefacts from Spanish museum in four-minute heist

Thieves executed a swift and professional heist, stealing jewellery and artefacts from a significant Bronze Age gold collection housed in a Spanish museum. The Treasure of Villena, a unique assemblage of almost ten kilos of gold, along with bowls, bottles, and bracelets, dating back to approximately 1,000 BC, was targeted. The museum, located in the Spanish province of Alicante, confirmed the theft of items including rings, bowls, and bracelets.

The operation unfolded early Thursday morning when alarms initially sounded at a local sports centre, prompting police to respond within minutes. However, the thieves had already infiltrated the museum, managing to extract the valuables before officers arrived. The theft transpired within a four-minute window, described by the museum's spokesman as "super fast and super professional."

Mayor Fulgencio Cerdán of Villena expressed devastation, emphasizing that the theft represented a loss of substantial cultural heritage. The museum's collection, primarily consisting of gold items, also included pieces of silver, iron, and amber, comprising over 60 Bronze Age objects, such as 29 bracelets, 11 bowls, and three bottles.

The mayor underscored that the theft had dealt a severe blow to the town's pride and wealth, describing it as a profound loss. The incident follows a series of high-profile museum robberies across Europe in the past year, including a daylight robbery at the Louvre in Paris where jewellery worth $102 million was stolen, and the recent recovery of valuable paintings by renowned artists from a museum in Parma.