[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/tesoro-4.jpg?w=1024″]<\/p>\n
\n\tThieves ransacked Spain\u2018s Villena Museum, taking with them one of Europe\u2019s most significant Bronze Age gold collections in a record four-minute heist on Thursday morning, the Guardian<\/em> reported.<\/p>\n \n\tThe thieves stole items from the Treasure of Villena, one of the city\u2019s treasured prehistoric artifacts that includes some 66 Bronze Age objects, among them, 29 bracelets, 11 bowls, three bottles, and other miscellaneous pieces dating to 1000 BCE. It\u2019s unclear how many pieces were stolen, but according to local media reports, the thieves left behind a few items including three silver vessels, a bracelet, and some of the ornamentation of the bast\u00f3n del reyezuelo (or the \u201cKingfisher staff\u201d), a prehistoric ceremonial scepter. <\/p>\n \n\tThe mayor of Villena Fulgencio Cerd\u00e1n said that the thieves took \u201cmost of the treasure\u201d and that the city is \u201cabsolutely devastated, I\u2019m even trembling. The truth is that for those of us from Villena, this destroys us. It\u2019s part of our heritage, of our wealth.\u201d The gold pieces that were stolen are estimated to be worth \u20ac1.7 million ($1.98 million).<\/p>\n \n\tA spokesperson for the Villena council said that the alarm at the museum went off around 5:20 a.m. and that the thieves had escaped the building by 5:24 a.m., describing the incident as \u201csuper-fast and super-professional.\u201d The Spanish government\u2019s deputy representative in Alicante, Manuel Pineda said that the thieves had arrived in several vehicles and broke into the museum through a window, but the Villena spokesperson argued that \u201call security systems were activated\u201d and that the museum had \u201cno failure\u201d in the situation.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tThe robbery was meticulously planned by the thieves; prior to the alarms going off at the museum, an alarm had gone off at the city\u2019s sports center that authorities are calling suspicious. \u201cThey had it very well planned. They knew how to do it, how to act and how to escape,\u201d Mauro Hern\u00e1ndez, an expert on the treasure and a professor of archaeology at the University of Alicante told the broadcaster Cadena SER.<\/p>\n \n\tThe theft follows a report, published earlier this week by Europol, about how European museums are on high alert as the target of numerous robberies, with precious metals and jewelry of particular interest for thieves because of their value on the market and the ease with which they can be melted down.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n [analyse_source url=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/art-news\/news\/gold-pieces-stolen-from-the-treasure-of-villena-1234796080\/”]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/tesoro-4.jpg?w=1024″] Thieves ransacked Spain\u2018s Villena Museum, taking with them one of Europe\u2019s most significant Bronze Age gold collections in a record four-minute heist on Thursday morning, the Guardian reported. The thieves stole items from the Treasure of Villena, one of the city\u2019s treasured prehistoric artifacts that includes some 66 Bronze Age objects, among […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,226],"class_list":["post-2115641","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-artnews-com","tag-crawlmanager"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2115641","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2115641"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2115641\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2115641"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2115641"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2115641"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}