Thieves on Thursday raided the Treasure of Villena -- one of the greatest Bronze Age gold collections — in the latest high-profile heist at a European museum, officials said. The raid on the 50-plus mainly gold objects in the Spanish town of Villena lasted just minutes. "The alarm at the Villena Museum went off around 5:20 a.m.," said a spokesman for the town council, adding that by 5:24 a.m. the thieves had already left the building.
The operation was "super-fast and super-professional," the spokesman said. "They've taken most of the treasure," the mayor of Villena, Fulgencio Cerdan, told journalists, his voice breaking. "We are absolutely devastated, I'm even trembling.
The truth is that for those of us from Villena, this destroys us. It's part of our heritage, of our wealth," Cerdan said. The 29 bracelets, 11 bowls, three bottles and other miscellaneous pieces in the Treasure of Villena are kept in a small museum in the Alicante province town.
Though mainly gold, there are also pieces of silver, iron and amber, all dating back to about 1,000 BC. The treasure was discovered in 1963 by Jose Maria Soler in a vessel sunk in a dried-out riverbed in Villena. While the treasure's historical value is incalculable, the gold alone is worth around $2 million, according to the mayor.
The thieves arrived in several vehicles and apparently entered the museum "through a window," according to the Spanish government's deputy representative in Alicante, Manuel Pineda. "All security systems were activated," according to the Villena spokesman, who insisted there had been "no failure" by the museum. Shortly before the robbery, another alarm went off at the city's sports center and authorities were investigating whether that was a diversion created by the thieves, the spokesperson added.
Last October, thieves broke into the Louvre museum in Paris in broad daylight, escaping in less than eight minutes with jewelry worth $102 million. The suspected thieves have been arrested and charged, but none of the jewels have been recovered except for a crown that was dropped as the group escaped. There have since been a series of brazen raids in institutions across Europe.
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