Thieves stole paintings by Renoir, Cézanne and Matisse from a museum in Italy a week ago, police have said.

Four masked men entered the villa of the Magnani Rocca Foundation, near Parma in northern Italy, and made off with the artworks on the night of 22 March, a police spokesperson said, confirming a report on the Rai television network.

They stole Fish by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Still Life with Cherries by Paul Cézanne and Odalisque on the Terrace by Henri Matisse, according to Italian media reports.

The stolen paintings had an estimated total value of €9m (£7.8m), the BBC reported.

The thieves forced open the entrance door to get into a room on the first floor before escaping across the museum gardens. The operation took less than three minutes and was structured and organised, the museum told the broadcaster SkyTG24.

They had not been able to go any further thanks to the surveillance system and rapid intervention of police and security officers, the museum added. Police are looking at the museum’s video surveillance footage and that of neighbouring businesses, said a police spokesperson.

The Magnani Rocca Foundation, which lies 20km (12 miles) from Parma, hosts the collection of the art historian Luigi Magnani, which also includes works by Dürer, Rubens, Van Dyck, Goya and Monet. It was founded in 1977.

The theft is the latest in a series of robberies targeting major museums in Europe.

In October last year, thieves broke into the Louvre in Paris in broad daylight, escaping in less than eight minutes with jewellery worth $102m.