Three masterpieces have been stolen from an Italian gallery, police revealed on Monday. It took just 180 seconds for a gang of thieves to steal paintings by Renoir, Cézanne and Matisse worth £8.7m (€10m) from an Italian museum.
Italian police say that on Sunday March 22, four masked men broke into the Magnani Rocca Foundation villa near Parma and made off with the masterpieces in just three minutes. Paintings taken in the smash and grab included Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s Les Poissons, Paul Cézanne’s Still Life with Cherries and Henri Matisse’s Odalisque on the Terrace. Using crowbars to pry open metal bars protecting the gallery’s rear entrance, the gang escaped by climbing over a fence.
“The criminals attacked in less than three minutes, not suddenly but in a well-organized manner,” the museum said.
Stealing paintings from the French Room on the first floor, the thieves involved in the robbery entered the Villa dei Capolavori through the main door.
The criminals were interrupted only by the museum’s alarm system, preventing them from committing further thefts.
Officers described the group as “structured and organised” and believe they intended to commit more thefts, but their raid was foiled when the alarm was raised when police arrived at the scene.
However, by the time they arrived the thieves had fled but the masked men left behind a fourth painting that they had taken from the gallery walls. That artwork has not been identified.
The goods were valued at just over £8 million, with Les Poissons alone valued at £5 million, making it one of Italy’s most significant art heists in recent memory.
Authorities are now reviewing surveillance footage from the museum along with recordings from nearby businesses. The theft is being investigated by Italy’s Carabinieri and Bologna’s cultural heritage protection unit. The news of the robbery was made public only on Sunday.
The brazen theft comes less than six months after a gang of thieves broke into the Louvre in Paris and stole some of the museum’s crown jewels. The shocking daylight robbery of the royal jewels is thought to be worth €88 million (£76 million).
