Italy Unveils 100+ Recovered Artworks From Illicit Trade

The Museum of Saved Art reopened on Thursday at the Octagonal Hall of Diocletian's Baths in Rome, showcasing the latest cultural treasures recovered by Italy's elite Carabinieri art squad over the past three years from Europe and the United States.

The exhibition, titled “New Recoveries,” features over 100 works dating from the 9th century BC to the 3rd century AD, all rescued from the illicit art market or repatriated from foreign institutions between 2022 and 2025.

Among the standout pieces are:

Gentle Etruscan female faces that once adorned alabaster cinerary urns.

Artifacts from the so-called “London and New York Treasury,” assembled over years by a well-known British antiquities dealer who later fled abroad.

Parade helmets and bronze breastplates, still echoing the glory and violence of ancient battles, identified through the Carabinieri’s photographic database.

The Potnia Theron, a goddess known for taming beasts, which once adorned a Hellenistic sanctuary in Ardea (south of Rome) and had made its way, via the black market, to the Israel Museum in Jerusalem.

“These treasures are not just artifacts,” said Edith Gabrielli, interim director of the National Roman Museum. “The recovery of a work doesn’t end with its return—it concludes when its meaning is restored.”

The museum previously gained attention in 2021 for exhibiting the Group of Orpheus and the Sirens, returned from the Getty Museum in Malibu and later destined for the Archaeological Museum of Taranto.

“This museum also holds symbolic value,” explained Luigi La Rocca, Head of the Department for the Protection of Cultural Heritage. “It makes tangible the restitution of cultural property to the public—goods that would otherwise serve only the interests of a few.”

The exhibit will be free to the public until August 31, after which it will be included in the standard ticket for the National Roman Museum. The recovered works will later be relocated to public museums, ideally in or near their original locations.

Alfonsina Russo, Head of the Department for the Promotion of Cultural Heritage, called the museum “an outpost of legality, especially for young people.” She added: “These works have been rescued from oblivion. Here, their voices can be heard again.”

Among the most intriguing items:

Richly decorated cinerary urns from the 3rd century BC, believed to have been taken from illegal excavations in Città della Pieve, Umbria, CE Report quotes ANSA.

A bronze statue of a mature man in a toga (togatus), recovered in Operation Fenice in Belgium. According to Russo, it likely comes from Perugia and stylistically resembles ancient Roman bronzes found at the Sanctuary of San Casciano dei Bagni in Tuscany. “It probably belonged to another sacred area that remains unknown to us,” she noted.

General Francesco Gargaro of the Carabinieri Art Recovery Unit stated: “In fifty-five years of operation, we have recovered over three million works of art. Yet our database still contains 1.3 million missing items, and now artificial intelligence is helping us find them.”

Also on display are five marble theater masks from the 1st century AD, returned just two days ago by an American collector. They are among the 114 artworks recently recovered from the U.S.. Thanks to international agreements, over 600 works have been repatriated from the United States between late 2023 and early 2024.