A group of unknown persons carried out a robbery at the Celtic and Roman Museum in Manching (southern Germany) in which they obtained loot consisting of 450 gold coins valued at several million euros, the Bavarian police reported on Tuesday.
The treasure was considered the largest find of Celtic culture in Germany and had been found in 1999 near Manching.
"The robbery must have occurred in the morning hours. It was a classic procedure, as one might imagine in a bad movie."said a spokesman for the Regional Criminal Office.
Museum workers, however, only later noticed the theft.
Fiberglass cables had been cut the night before in Manching, affecting 13,000 telephone and internet users in the region.
With this the possibilities of communicating with the police had been interrupted as well as the automatic connection of the museum’s alarm system with the authorities.
Problems with mobile phone networks also arose in the same region.
"The museum is actually a high security building but communications with the police were cut off."he told the newspaper "Sueddeutsche Zeitung" the mayor Manching, Herbert Nerb who sees a relationship between the two facts.
"This is the work of professional thieves"he added.
Bavarian Minister of Culture Markus Blume described the loss of the Celtic treasure as a catastrophe.