MILAN — Italy’s culture minister on Thursday welcomed the return of 201 prized antiquities valued at over $11 million that had been located in prestigious U.S. museums and galleries after being illegally trafficked in recent decades.
They were among thousands of antiquities seized from traffickers or returned to Italy this year in major operations that also targeted trafficking rings in Belgium, the Netherlands, Switzerland and Germany.
Of the 201 works returned by U.S. officials earlier this month, 161 have been repatriated to Italy while 40 are on exhibit at the Italian Consulate General in New York through March 2022.
“These artworks will not end up, as has happened many times in the past, all in one big museum,” Culture Minister Dario Franceschini told a press conference. Instead, they will be returned to the places where they were stolen for display in museums there.
“This too is a great homecoming operation that will add value to our extraordinary country as a vast museum. They are artworks of absolute importance that will attract people to those places and territories,” Franceschini said.