25 stolen objects now on display at Berlin's Altes Museum will be returned to Italy: agreement signed

An agreement was signed today in Berlin, in the presence of Culture Minister Gennaro Sangiuliano, German Culture Minister Claudia Roth, and Italian Ambassador to Berlin Armando Varricchio, for the return of twenty-five objects of Italian provenance belonging to the Foundation for the Cultural Heritage of Prussia (SPK) chaired by Hermann Parzinger and currently on display at the Altes Museum in the classical antiquities collection section. The agreement was finalized as a result of the close collaboration between the Italian and German Ministries of Culture, the Foundation and the Berlin museum in the operations of evaluating and sourcing cultural goods from illegal excavations or robberies, tracing the path of archaeological collections from their discovery to their entry into exhibition sites.

Thus, a valuable funerary set of Appula provenance, consisting of 14 vases and ten decorated plates, as well as a fragment of a fresco from a villa in Boscoreale, returns to Italy.

On twenty-one of the twenty-five artifacts the competent judicial authorities, namely the Public Prosecutors’ Offices of Rome and Foggia, the latter represented at the ceremony by Deputy Prosecutor Rosa Pensa, have opened legal proceedings, following investigations by the Carabinieri for the Protection of Cultural Heritage and issued confiscation orders. To date, the German judicial authority has refused to execute the decrees issued by the Rome Public Prosecutor’s Office on the grounds that the Altes Museum’s right to defense was not respected, as it was not given the opportunity to participate in the hearing that determined the confiscation decree.

In view of the Prussian Museums Foundation’s willingness to return the artifacts, a cooperation agreement was also negotiated that, on the model of agreements signed with other foreign museums, provides for the loan for four years (renewable once) of a number of artifacts to the German museum in exchange for their return, including two from the National Archaeological Museum of Naples and two from the Archaeological Parks of Paestum and Velia.

“These are archaeological finds that experts consider to be of great importance,” said Culture Minister Gennaro Sangiuliano. “We conducted close diplomatic work to bring them back to Italy. I thank the German government for respecting the rules. We will continue to work to bring back home what illegally ended up abroad.”

“This repatriation is a clear example of the effectiveness of cultural property protection in Germany and Europe,” said German Culture Minister Claudia Roth. “What today’s repatriation highlights is the deeper meaning of protection, which is to identify and protect cultural property from looting, robbery, smuggling and illegal excavations. Equally important is the close cooperation between Germany and Italy in this field: so far no other country has received as many returns of illegally traded cultural goods as Italy.”

“The signing of the agreement with the SPZ is an example for cultural diplomacy and has shown how the cooperative work of the institutions of both countries was necessary for the protection and enhancement of our cultural heritage,” added the Secretary General of the Ministry of Culture Mario Turetta, who signed the agreement for the ministry.

25 stolen objects now on display at Berlin's Altes Museum will be returned to Italy: agreement signed

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