More than 250 historic relics that were stolen from Italy have been returned by the US to that country.
The objects had been stolen and sold to US museums and private collectors in the 1990s, according to the art unit of Italy’s police force.
A few of the priceless antiques are pots, paintings, and sculptures that date back as far as 3,000 years.
Numerous mosaics have a market value in the tens of millions of euros.
The oldest artefact is from the Villanovan period (1000–750 BC), while others are from the Etruscan civilization (800–200 BC), Magna Graecia (750–400 BC), and Imperial Rome (27 BC–476 AD).
A handful of the antiquities appeared to have been offered to the Menil Collection, a museum in Houston, Texas, after the majority of them had been stolen in the 1990s and sold through a number of dealers.
The Menil Collection, according to the Italian Ministry of Culture, houses the objects, although a museum representative disputes this and claims they have never been a part of the collection.
The spokeswoman claimed that the museum had been asked to donate the antiquities but turned them down in favour of directing the donor to Italy’s ministry of culture.
After police discovered that the artefacts came from unauthorised excavations of ancient sites, the ministry claimed that the owner of the collection “spontaneously” returned the items.
According to a separate statement from the ministry, 145 of the returned treasures were the result of a bankruptcy proceeding against English antiques merchant Robin Symes, who gathered thousands of items as part of an unlawful trading network.
Italy has a lengthy history of looking for stolen antiques and artefacts that have been bought by private collectors and sold to museums.
In September 2022, New York returned to Italy stolen artwork valued at $19 million (£16 million), including a $3 million-plus marble head of the goddess Athena from the year 200 BC.