United States returns 266 stolen antiquities to Italy including Etruscan vases and Roman mosaics

Italy is celebrating the restitution of 266 valuable antiquities from the United States, a collection encompassing Etruscan vases and ancient Roman coins and mosaics with an estimated value in the tens of millions of euros. 

These artefacts had been illicitly looted and subsequently traded to US museums and private collectors in the late 1990s, by a network of smuggles. 

Among the returned items are pieces recently confiscated in New York from a storage unit linked to British antiquities dealer Robin Symes, as confirmed by officials.

Additionally, the collection that arrived in Rome included 65 objects that were offered to Houston's Menil Collection by a collector but were declined.

The art unit of Italy’s Carabinieri paramilitary police said the owner of the collection “spontaneously” gave back the items after investigators determined they had come from clandestine excavations of archaeological sites, according to a carabinieri statement.

While the carabinieri said the works had been part of the Menil Collection, the museum said they never were. 

The museum said a collector approached the museum in 2022 about making a gift of the artefacts, but the museum curator directed the collector to the Italian culture minister, “who alerted the museum that Italy was claiming the objects.”

Italy has been on a decades-long campaign to recover antiquities that were looted by “tombaroli,” or tomb raiders, and then sold to private collectors and museums in the US and beyond. 

Some of the items were handed over to Italian authorities at the offices of the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg. 

Bragg’s office said they included an Apulian krater, or vase, dating from 335 B.C. that was seized in July from a private collection in New York.

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