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Nice museum's stolen paintings recovered

Paintings stolen last year from the Museum of Fine Arts in Nice have been recovered by the police. A Monet landscape and three other paintings that were stolen by masked gunmen from the museum on the French Riviera last August. The paintings from the Museum of Fine Arts in Nice were discovered in a utility vehicle parked Marseille, the prosecutor's office said.

About ten people were brought in for questioning in simultaneous sweeps in Nice, Marseille and Bandol and their homes were searched, the prosecutor's office said. The police said investigators tracked the suspected gang for weeks and moved as a sale of the art was being planned.

The paintings were stolen last August by the gunmen as visitors were in the museum in Nice. The paintings taken were Monet's 1897 "Cliffs near Dieppe"; the 1890 "Lane of Poplars near Moret" by  Alfred Sisley and Flemish master Jan Brueghel the Elder's 17th century "Allegory of Earth" and "Allegory of Water."

The Monet and Sisley paintings have quite a history of being stolen. Ten years ago the then-curator of the museum staged a heist in which masked, armed men took him "hostage" and forced him to take them to the museum before fleeing in the curator's car.

The paintings were later discovered on a boat in Nice harbor. The curator was convicted and given a prison sentence. The Sisley has been stolen three times in all, first in 1978 while on loan at an exhibit in Marseille, followed by the thefts in 1998 and 2007.

This article was written for TravelSavvy Europe by Bob Cartwright. If you know of an interesting European travel related news story, please get in contact.