Thieves stole most of the Treasure of Villena, a Bronze Age collection containing 66 mainly gold objects, from a museum in Spain’s Villena town. The raid lasted just four minutes, with investigators calling it a highly planned operation. The stolen artefacts date back nearly 3,000 years and hold immense historical value.

Thieves have stolen most of the Treasure of Villena, one of Europe’s most significant prehistoric collections, in a meticulously executed raid on a museum in the Spanish town of Villena.

The heist took just four minutes on Thursday morning, with the thieves targeting the collection of 66 mostly gold Bronze Age objects, whose gold content alone is estimated to be worth about €1.7 million.

“The alarm at the Villena Museum went off around 5.20am [4.20am BST],” a spokesperson for the town council said, adding that the thieves had fled by 5.24am. The operation was “super-fast and super-professional”, the spokesperson said, The Guardian reports.

“They’ve taken most of the treasure,” Villena mayor Fulgencio Cerdán told journalists.