Thieves steal prehistoric gold from museum in Spain

Thieves have stolen jewellery and artefacts from one of the most important prehistoric gold collections at a museum in the Spanish province of Alicante.

The Treasure of Villena is a unique trove of almost ten kilos of gold, bowls, bottles and bracelets dating back to the Bronze Age.

Police are still assessing exactly how many items were stolen in the raid, which took place in the early hours of Thursday morning. The museum confirmed to the BBC that rings, bowls and bracelets were among the items seized.

It is the latest high profile heist on a European museum. Last year, thieves staged a brazen robbery at the Louvre in Paris in broad daylight.

The operation at Villena Museum was "super fast and super professional", a spokesman for Villena town council said.

The city council said the robbery began with a diversion. Around 05:15 local time (03:15 GMT), the alarms went off at the local sports centre, sending police there first, Spanish media reported.

The museum's alarm then went off around 05:20. It took the thieves just four minutes to sweep through museum and leave the building before officers arrived.

The Mayor of Villena, Fulgencio Cerdán, said the thieves "stole a large part of the treasure," specifically all the gold, El Pais reported.

The museum's collection, which dates back to around 1,000 BC, is mainly gold items, but there are also pieces of silver, iron and amber.

It consists of more than 60 bronze age objects, including 29 bracelets, 11 bowls, three bottles and other miscellaneous pieces.

The town is "devastated," Cerdán said. "They've taken most of the treasure."

"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," the mayor said.

The collection was discovered in 1963 by archaeologist Jose María Soler in a vessel sunk in a dried-out riverbed in Villena.

The Villena council spokesman insisted there had been "no failure" by the museum.

"All security systems were activated."

The past year has seen a series of raids on European museums. In October 2025, thieves broke into the Louvre museum in Paris in broad daylight, stealing jewellery worth $102m (£75m) before escaping on scooters, in a heist that took about eight minutes.

Last week, four works "of extraordinary value" by Renaissance artist Antonello da Messina were stolen from a museum in Sicily, Italy's culture ministry said.

Earlier this month, Italian police said they had recovered paintings by Renoir, Cezanne and Matisse worth over $10.4m (£7.6m) which were stolen from the Magnani-Rocca Foundation museum near Parma.