Italy celebrates return of over 200 artefacts stolen by 'tomb raiders' and sold to US collectors

Italy has celebrated the return of 266 antiquities from the US, worth tens of millions of euros, that police had discovered were stolen.

Included in the haul were Etruscan vases and ancient Roman coins and mosaics that were looted and sold to US museums and private collectors.

The returned items include artifacts recently seized in New York from a storage unit belonging to British antiquities dealer Robin Symes, officials said.

In addition, the haul that arrived in Rome included 65 objects that had been offered by a collector to Houston’s Menil Collection, 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.

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

The looting operations involved art dealers who sold the items directly or via auctions.

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

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

The vase had been photographed and included in the famous Polaroid “archive” of dealer Giacomo Medici, who passed it onto Mr Symes, who then “laundered the piece through Sotheby’s London,” Bragg’s office alleged.

Other items included two Etruscan tile paintings from Cerveteri, a frequently-looted necropolis site northwest of Rome, that date back to 440 BC.

According to Mr Bragg’s office, the tiles were looted in the 1980s and ended up with Mr Symes, who sold them to noted New York collectors Shelby White and Leon Levy in 1992 for $1.6 million (£1.26m).

The couple returned the tiles to Mr Symes before 1999 “after questions about their illicit origins were raised by multiple scholars,” the statement said.

The objects remained in Mr Symes’ New York storage unit until they were seized in March.

The Italian police art squad said the value of all 266 pieces, on the open market, would come to tens of millions of euros.

The Symes items are in addition to 750 pieces that were in the possession of Mr Symes' London company, Symes Ltd, which is being liquidated, and Italy put on display on May 31.

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