At a ceremony in Rome, Germany on Monday returned 14 contraband objects recovered by police and stolen from Italian museums or illegally mined.
Objects included a bronze Corinthian helmet from the 3rd or 4th century BC. J.-C. which would have been excavated illegally in Sicily. Also among the returned items were four Romano-Byzantine gold coins stolen from the National Archaeological Museum of Parma in 2009 and recovered from merchants and private owners in Germany, and a 16th-century Venetian jewelry box stolen from the Castello Sforzesco from Milan in 2006. The wooden box, inlaid with carved bone and produced by the famous Embriachi workshop, was smuggled via Britain and Belgium to Germany, where it was offered for sale.
Acting on information provided by the Carabinieri in 2019, Bavarian police seized an Attic band cup dating from around 550 BC and decorated with images of Greek mythology from a Munich auction house where they were to be illegally offered for sale, the Bavarian state crime office said. in a press release.
“The fight against the illegal trade in cultural heritage can only be successful if we work together,” German Culture Minister Claudia Roth said in a press release.
Guido Limmer, the vice-president of the Bavarian police, said the returns “underlined the excellent cooperation between the Italian and Bavarian authorities”.
