Italy recovers 42 looted archaeological works, some 2,500 years old

American investigators returned 42 looted and smuggled archaeological works to Italian authorities during a ceremony in New York on Tuesday, August 8.

These 42 exceptional pieces – some 2,500 years old – have a combined value of 3.5 million dollars (3.2 million euros). “We continue to undo the damage caused by decades of highly organized antiquities smuggling networks across Italy,” New York State Attorney Alvin Bragg said in a statement. borough of Manhattan.

Mr. Bragg, stating that “more than 200 works have been returned” to Rome since he took over as head of the Manhattan prosecution in 2022. Rifle General Vincenzo Molinese hailed “the great success of the investigation thanks to an Italian-American collaboration”.

Over 1,000 items returned to nineteen countries

Among the works recovered and returned is a vase from the Italian region of Puglia dating from 335 BC. It was stolen from a burial site in southern Italy before being smuggled abroad by a trafficker of Italian art, Giacomo Medici, according to the New York justice.

This chalice which was used to mix water and wine had been salvaged by a “disgraced British art dealer, Robin Symes, who then laundered it through [the auction house] Sotheby’s in London”. The work was seized in July from a private collector in New York.

Two Etruscan-era tile paintings from 440 BC were looted in central Italy in the 1980s before ending up with Robin Symes, who sold them in 1992 for $1.6 million. dollars to a couple of New York collectors, Shelby White and Leon Levy. Worried about the provenance of the works, White and Levy had returned them in 1999 to Symes, who kept them in New York until last March.

In the cultural and economic capital of the United States, kingdom of grandiose museums such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the extremely wealthy auction houses Christie’s and Sotheby’s, the Manhattan prosecutor’s office has been leading a campaign since 2017 to return works looted from around the world between 1970 and 1990, smuggled into Europe and the United States and seized from museums and private collections in New York.

Under the aegis of the prosecutor Bragg, more than 1,000 pieces for 185 million dollars were returned to nineteen countries, including Cambodia, China, India, Pakistan, Egypt, Iraq, Greece, Turkey or Italy.