Museum Heist: €9m Renoir and Cezanne Masterpieces Stolen in 3 Minutes

Paintings worth more than €9 million vanished from a museum in northern Italy in just three minutes. Masked criminals pulled off the heist at the Magnani-Rocca Foundation near Parma on March 22, snatching masterpieces by Renoir, Cezanne, and Matisse in exactly 180 seconds. The stolen goods include Fish by Auguste Renoir, valued at £2.6 million; Still Life with Cherries by Paul Cezanne, worth £5.1 million; and Odalisque on the Terrace by Henri Matisse, priced at £17,000.

Italian police confirmed on Friday that the artworks have been recovered. Two thieves wearing balaclavas and head torches broke through a window to enter the museum. They ripped the paintings from the walls, carried them back to the opening, and passed them out to an accomplice waiting outside. A jammer disabled the museum's alarm system initially, but its effect wore off as the gang fled, alerting security forces.

The break-in relied on a fire extinguisher set off near the security lodge to create a diversion early in the raid. Investigators say that serial number had been wiped from the device, yet prosecutors insist the suspects must have accessed the building where it was stolen to remove it. Police also traced the tool used to smash the window back to the shop that sold it. The gang mainly robbed shops and offices before organizing wiretaps on the suspects and raiding 13 addresses, including the home holding the paintings.

Authorities found the five Moldovan arrests in the storeroom of a house in Parma. There, the stolen masterpieces were stashed inside the cardboard packaging of a flat-screen television. This discovery was key to tracing the artworks back to their location. The Magnani-Rocca Foundation sits around 20km from Parma and houses the collection of art historian Luigi Magnani. It includes works by Albrecht Dürer, Francisco Goya, and Claude Monet alongside the stolen pieces.

This March raid is the latest in a series of robberies targeting major European museums. In October last year, thieves broke into the Louvre in Paris, stealing more than £75 million worth of jewellery in broad daylight at the most visited museum in the world. The speed of this operation and the quick recovery raise urgent questions about how such high-value items remain vulnerable even after hours of theft.