Museum's Cezanne stolen

While everyone in Britain celebrated the new millennium on January 1 2000, a Ł3 million painting by Paul Cezanne was stolen from the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford.
The painting - Auvers-sur-Oise - Depicts a cluster of small white cottages set in a tree-lined valley and dates from around 1880. Police believe the thieves broke in through the main gallery's glass roof while thousands of people were revelling on the streets outside. The thieves may have gained access from the adjoining libary, which was undergoing building work at the time, before clambering over rooftops to reach the museum itself.
The director of the Ashmolean described the theft as a 'shattering blow'. The Ashmolean is home to one of Britain's finest art collections, wchich includes works by Leonardo da Vinci, Picasso, Van Gogh and Michelangelo. However, it is not the first time the Ashmolean, the world's oldest public museum, has been targeted by thieves. In 1997, two seventeenth-century French bottles were stolen from the museum. In 1992, security measures were stopped up after Greek vases, paintings, silverwere and a sixteenth-century painting were stolen by a visitor under his coat.