Six Ancient Frescoes Stolen From Roman Villas Over the Decades Have Been Returned to Pompeii
Italian police recovered three of the frescoes last year, while the rest were found during the bust of an illegal excavation in 2012.
Italian authories with two recovered frescoes. Courtesy of the Archaeological Park of Pompeii.
Fragments of six frescoes once stolen from the walls of ancient Roman villas were returned to Pompeii in a ceremony at the archaeological site on Tuesday morning.
Three of the frescoes were recovered by a local Italian cultural heritage protection unit last year as part of a larger investigative effort to crack down on the illegal trafficking of ancient artifacts. The objects were believed to have been taken from Stabia, an archeological site located near Pompeii, in the 1970s, before being promptly smuggled out of the country. By the 1990s, they had been sold to collectors in America, Switzerland, and England.