A resounding heist. During the night from Tuesday to Wednesday, individuals broke into the Villena Museum in Alicante, a port city in southeastern Spain, and stole the Villena Treasure. This collection of goldwork constitutes one of the most precious objects of European archaeology.
59 precious objects
The events occurred around 5:10 a.m. this Thursday, August 27. In the space of four minutes, the thugs bypassed the museum’s security and fled with 59 pieces of amber, gold and silver from the Bronze Age, a period of protohistory characterized by the mastery of this alloy of tin and copper, which extends from approximately 2,300 to 800 BCE in Western Europe. Three crowns of the Virgin and Child, kept in the museum, have also disappeared. From Villena’s treasure only three silver vases, four crowns, a bracelet and some ornaments of a staff remain.
According to the media El Paísthe value of the stolen artifacts exceeds 1.5 million euros. The municipal police and the Civil Guard are leading the investigation in what appears to be a professional maneuver. The museum’s alarm went off at 5:20 a.m. At 5:24 a.m., the police arrived on the scene, but the burglars had already fled. They entered through the side windows, which they managed to break through despite the armor systems and the important security system.
The Treasure of Villena was discovered in December 1963 in a ravine located near the town, by the teams of the Spanish archaeologist José Maria Soler. They had traced the trace of a bracelet belonging to the group, discovered two months earlier on a construction site. According to experts, it is the second most important discovery in European archaeology, after the tombs of the kings at Mycenae, Greece.
