See more Daily Mail on Google - save us as a Preferred SourceBy JOE ROSSITER, REPORTER Published: 01:59 BST, 15 August 2026 | Updated: 02:14 BST, 15 August 2026
Paintings worth more than €9million (£7.7million) were stolen in just three minutes by masked thieves from a museum in northern Italy.Video showed the thieves sneaking into the Magnani-Rocca Foundation near Parma to steal the works by Renoir, Cezanne and Matisse in just 180 seconds.After being stolen on March 22, the paintings have now been recovered, Italian police said on Friday.Two thieves wearing balaclavas and head torches were caught on video breaking through a window to enter the museum.They stole three paintings – Fish by Auguste Renoir, Still Life with Cherries by Paul Cezanne, and Odalisque on the Terrace by Henri Matisse – from the walls before bringing them back to the window and passing them to an accomplice outside.Fish is worth £2.6million, Still Life with Cherries £5.1million and Odalisque on the Terrace £17,000.Italian police said they had arrested five Moldovans and found the paintings in the storeroom of a house in Parma.They had been stashed in the cardboard packaging of a flat-screen television. Thieves stole €9million-worth of artwork from an Italian museum in under three minutes The daring raid staged in March saw two masked thieves break into the museum in Parma, northern Italy, before passing the three paintings out through a window A fire extinguisher the gang set off as a diversion was key to tracing the paintings, as police were able to identify the building from which it was stolen The thieves used a jammer to stop the museum's alarm from sounding But the jammer wore off as they fled the scene and police were alertedThe thieves reportedly used a jammer to disable the museum's alarm system, the effect of which wore off as they fled with the paintings and alerted security.But the conspirators were foiled by a fire extinguisher they set off near the security lodge to create a diversion early on in the raid.Though its serial number had been wiped off, prosecutors said the suspects must have had access to the building from which it was stolen.Police also traced a tool used to smash the museum's window to the shop which sold it.They found the gang mainly robbed shops and offices, organising wiretaps on the suspects before raiding 13 addresses including that which held the artworks.The Magnani-Rocca Foundation, around 20km (12 miles) from Parma, houses the collection of art historian Luigi Magnani and includes works by Albrecht Dürer, Francisco Goya and Claude Monet.March's theft was the latest in a series of robberies targeting major European museums.In October last year thieves broke into the Louvre in Paris, the most visited museum in the world, stealing more than £75million of jewellery in broad daylight.
