- Italy is celebrating the return from the United States of 600 antiquities, including ancient bronze statues, gold coins, mosaics and manuscripts, worth a total of $65 million.
- Italy has been working for decades to recover antiquities that have been plundered or stolen from its territory by tomb robbers and, in many cases, sold to merchants.
- The most valuable artifact returned was a 4th century Naxos silver coin depicting Dionysius.
Italy on Tuesday celebrated the return from the United States of nearly 600 artefacts, including ancient bronze statues, gold coins, mosaics and manuscripts worth $65 million that were looted years ago and sold to American museums, galleries and collectors before being recovered following a criminal investigation.
The presentation was attended by U.S. Ambassador Jack Markel, Matthew Bogdanos, head of the New York District Attorney’s Office’s Antiquities Trafficking Unit, and members of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security Investigations, along with senior officials from the Italian Ministry of Culture and the Italian Police Artistic Unit.
It was the latest display in Italy’s decades-long effort to recover antiquities looted or stolen from the country by tomb robbers, or “tombarori,” who sell the objects to antiquities dealers who often falsify or alter provenance records and resell them to high-priced buyers, auction houses and museums.
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Markel said Washington is committed to returning the stolen loot “to where it belongs” as a sign of respect for Italy and its cultural and artistic heritage.
Stolen artworks returned from the United States to the Italian Police for the Protection of Cultural Heritage were exhibited at a presentation in Rome on May 28, 2024. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)
“We know protecting this history requires care and vigilance, which is why we’re doing it,” he said, adding that the United States was keeping a close eye on Ukraine, the latest target for art traffickers.
The latest U.S. seizures did not include the ancient Greek bronze statue of “Victorious Youth,” the subject of a decades-long legal battle between Italy and the Getty Museum in Malibu, Calif. The prized statue was recently thrust into the spotlight again after the European Court of Human Rights strongly upheld Italy’s right to seize it, reaffirming that the statue had been illegally exported from Italy.
Bogdanos and Department of Homeland Security officials declined to comment on whether or when the Victory Youth would be returned, citing the ongoing investigation.
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Among the most valuable artifacts on display Tuesday was a fourth-century Naxos silver coin depicting Dionysius, the god of wine, that was looted from an illegal excavation site in Sicily and smuggled into Britain before 2013. The coin, which was on sale for $500,000, was discovered in New York last year as part of an investigation into a prominent British coin dealer, Bogdanos said.
He said other items returned from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and from prominent New York philanthropists who had donated art to the museum’s collection also turned out to be stolen.
The relics, dating from the 9th to 2nd centuries BCE, included life-size bronze statues, bronze heads and Etruscan vases. The rest of the items, including 16th- and 19th-century oil paintings, were stolen from documented museums, religious sites and private homes in Italy, the Carabinieri said.
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Bogdanos, who worked with Italy’s Carabinieri art unit to recover antiquities stolen in Iraq after the U.S. invasion, said Washington made no distinction between items taken in illegal excavations and those stolen in burglaries, equating it all to looting.
“Looting is endemic,” Bogdanos said. “Local people know when the guards are in and when they are out. They know that the guards are guarding certain areas and not others. They know when scientific, proper, authorized archaeological digs are taking place, and they know when the digs are closed for winter, for lack of funding, etc.”
Given that, he said, looting is always going to happen.
“Our job is to minimize that, to increase the risk for people involved in this trafficking, to convict them and, where appropriate, sentence them,” Bogdanos said.
