An art thief had all the climbing skills of Spiderman, a French court was told on Monday.

Yet he needed none of them to walk off with more than €100 million worth of masterpieces - including a Matisse, Picasso and Modigliani - from a Paris museum with "disconcerting ease".

An alleged accomplice has claimed he later threw the lot into a rubbish bin in a moment of panic.

Vjeran Tomic, 49, whose Spiderman nickname stems from his ability to scale buildings to rob apartments, was accused of stealing five paintings after he broke into the Musée d'Art Moderne opposite the Eiffel Tower in May 2010, in what has been described as one of the biggest painting thefts in recent years.