Bronze Age<\/a> artifacts often described as one of the most significant prehistoric European finds.<\/p>\n![\"Part](\"https:\/\/images.jpost.com\/image\/upload\/f_auto,fl_lossy\/c_fill,g_faces:center,h_537,w_822\/737094\"\/)
Part of the Treasure of Villena. (credit: MUSEUM OF VILLENA)<\/p>\n
The collection is made up of 66 artifacts of gold, silver, iron and amber. The gold artifacts including 11 bowls, three bottles and 28 bracelets.<\/p>\n
It was originally discovered in 1963 by Spanish archaeologist Jos\u00e9 Mar\u00eda Soler.<\/p>\n
The theft happened \u201cin a matter of minutes,\u201d Villena Mayor Fulgencio Cerd\u00e1n said during a press conference following the robbery.<\/p>\n
He explained that the robbery took place around 5:20 a.m., with the thieves believed to have left the museum approximately four minutes later.<\/p>\n
While most of the treasure had been taken, Cerd\u00e1n noted that three silver vessels, a bracelet, some ornamentation of the bast\u00f3n del reyezuelo, and the \u201cKingfisher staff.\u201d<\/p>\n
The stolen gold pieces are estimated to be worth \u20ac1.7 million, according to media reports.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are absolutely devastated,\u201d Cerd\u00e1n said. \u201cI am shaking. The truth is that, for those of us from Villena, this destroys us. It is part of our heritage and part of our wealth and of what we feel proud of.\u201d<\/p>\n
Following the theft, MUVI stated in a social media post that it has temporarily closed its doors to the public, but will announce a reopening date as soon as possible.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe MUVI’s pieces and collections are not just heritage: they are shared memory, part of everyone’s history,\u201d the museum wrote. \u201cWe have full confidence in the ongoing investigations and the professionalism of the State Security Forces.\u201d<\/p>\n
Queen Nazli\u2019s diamond necklace<\/p>\n
That same day, two unmasked men smashed a display case at Vienna’s Museum of Applied Arts (MAK) and stolen a diamond necklace worth over $4 million.<\/p>\n
It had been featured at the MAK as part of an exhibition titled \u201cGLANZST\u00dcCKE: Van Cleef & Arpels High Jewelry \u00d7 Masterpieces from the MAK Collection.\u201d<\/p>\n
According to Austrian state broadcaster ORT, the unmasked thieves bought tickets to the exhibit prior to the robbery and commited the theft during the museum\u2019s opening hours.<\/p>\n
Police added that the two then \u201cfled with the piece of jewelry in an unknown direction.\u201d<\/p>\n
Photographs and CCTV footage of the suspects have been shared by police, and has since been added to INTERPOL\u2019s Stolen Works of Art database.<\/p>\n
The museum noted in an August statement that it would not be sharing information regarding the investigation into the robbery.<\/p>\n
Belonging once to Queen Nazli of Egypt (1913-1936), the second wife of King Fuad I, the necklace is adorned with 673 diamonds and weighs about 200 carats.<\/p>\n
It, and a matching tiara, had been commissioned by Nazli for the wedding of her daughter Fawzia to, the at the time Iranian Crown Prince and later Shah, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi.<\/p>\n
Reuters contributed to this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nearly a year after the infamous Louvre heist shocked the world, a new series of museum thefts across…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":342994,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[33927,83919,30122,128579,39221,5213,1298,9,24,63,122,124,123,2208,797],"class_list":["post-342993","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-queens","tag-archaeology","tag-artifacts","tag-austria","tag-bronze-age","tag-diamond","tag-egypt","tag-museum","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-queens","tag-queens-headlines","tag-queens-news","tag-spain","tag-theft"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/342993","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=342993"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/342993\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/342994"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=342993"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=342993"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=342993"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}