New Delhi: Robbers broke into a museum in northern Italy last week and made off with three paintings worth millions in a daring heist that took only three minutes.
Four hooded men broke open a first-floor door at the Magnani Rocca Foundation, a private museum near Parma, overnight on 22 and 23 March, escaping with works by French impressionists Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Paul Cézanne, and visual artist Henri Matisse before disappearing across the villa’s grounds as alarms sounded.
The stolen works — Renoir’s Les Poissons (1917), Cézanne’s Still Life With Cherries (around 1890) and Matisse’s Odalisque On The Terrace (1922) — are estimated to be worth around €9 million (over Rs 97 crore), according to Italy’s public broadcaster, Rai.
The recent theft adds to a long list of audacious museum heists, many carried out within minutes. Here are six of the most daring museum heists in history:
1. Louvre Museum (1911)
On 21 August, 1911, a relatively obscure painting by Leonardo da Vinci disappeared from the Louvre museum in Paris.
The man behind it, Vincenzo Peruggia, was not a criminal mastermind. A former Louvre employee, he entered the museum in his worker’s smock, lifted the Mona Lisa (1503) off the wall, removed its frame in a stairwell, and walked out with it hidden under his coat.
The theft went unnoticed for hours.
The real story, however, began after the theft. Before 1911, the Mona Lisa was respected in art circles but not a global icon. Its kidnapping changed that. Newspapers across the world tracked every twist — suspects, false leads, and even wild theories involving avant-garde artists. Over the next two years, the Mona Lisa’s lore increased and it became the cultural phenomenon it is today.
The masterpiece was finally recovered in Florence in 1913.
Also Read: ‘All museums are at risk’. How Louvre heist sparked a reckoning on art security
2. Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum (1990)
In the early hours of 18 March 1990, two men disguised as police officers rang the buzzer at the Isabella Stewart Gardner museum in Boston and told guards they were responding to a disturbance.
Once inside the museum gates, the “policemen” handcuffed and tied up the guards in the basement.
They then spent 81 minutes inside, moving through galleries and selecting 13 works, including Johannes Vermeer’s The Concert (c. 1664–1666) and Rembrandt van Rijn’s The Storm on the Sea of Galilee (1633).
The thieves cut the paintings out of their frames, ignored several other valuable pieces, and walked out with what is now estimated at over $500 million. The heist is the largest unsolved art theft in history.
More than three decades later, no one has been convicted, and none of the works has been recovered.
3. Van Gogh Museum (2002)
In December 2002, two men used a ladder to reach the roof of the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, smashed a window with a sledgehammer, and entered the building before dawn. They headed straight for two paintings by van Gogh — View of the Sea at Scheveningen (1882) and Congregation Leaving the Reformed Church in Nuenen (1884)— and were gone before police could respond. The operation was over in less than four minutes.
Years later, the paintings were found in Italy, hidden in a property linked to the Camorra, one of the country’s most powerful organised crime groups.
Also Read: How two petty thieves pulled off a multi-million dollar heist at Hyderabad’s Nizam Museum
4. Munch Museum (2004)
It was mid-morning on 22 August, 2004, when masked gunmen entered the Munch Museum in Oslo. They threatened staff and visitors, and took Edvard Munch’s The Scream (1893) and Madonna (1894) off the walls in a 50-second heist in full public view.
The robbers fled in a stolen car, later abandoning it. The paintings remained missing for nearly two years. Police eventually recovered them in 2006 after a large-scale investigation, but both artworks had suffered substantial damage.
5. Kunsthal Museum (2012)
In October 2012, thieves broke into the Kunsthal museum in Rotterdam before dawn and executed one of the fastest art thefts on record.
The robbers entered through an emergency exit of the museum and in under two minutes, took seven paintings, including works by Pablo Picasso, Claude Monet and Henri Matisse.
Two Romanian suspects were later arrested and charged; the ringleader said the security at the museum was “practically non-existent”.
The robbers tried to sell the paintings without success and, in a twist, one defendant’s mother claimed she burned the paintings to destroy evidence. Authorities could not verify the claim, and the paintings were never recovered.
Also Read: ‘Mission Impossible’—Fevicol’s cheeky ad featuring Le Louvre jewellery heist
6. Louvre Museum, again (2025)
More than a century later, the largest museum in the world was tested again, this time by a coordinated, high-speed operation.
In October 2025, thieves struck shortly after opening hours and executed a precise heist in under ten minutes using glass cutters, making off with multiple pieces worth €76 million from the French Crown Jewels collection on a scooter.
The Louvre, one of the world’s most visited and most secure museums — with surveillance systems, controlled access points, and constant monitoring — had been breached. French authorities have arrested and charged multiple suspects linked to the robbery. At least five are facing charges. The jewels, although, have not been recovered yet, except the diamond-studded crown of Empress Eugénie, which the thieves dropped on their escape route.
(Edited by Insha Jalil Waziri)