An exhibition featuring hundreds of previously missing artifacts, some of them hunted by a special police unit over decades, are now being exhibited for the first time at the National Archaeological Museum of Naples.
The museum in Southern Italy has preserved 15,000 artifacts that have been seized or confiscated by the Carabinieri, a police unit focused on the protection of Italy’s cultural heritage. The new exhibit, “Rediscovered Treasures: Stories of Crimes and Stolen Finds” features 600 of these items, including ancient ceramics, coins, bronzes, marble sculptures, pottery, furnishing, weapons, and armor.
The exhibition, curated by the museum’s general director Massimo Osanna and its head of research Marialucia Giacco, highlights the “often complex dynamics that fuel the illicit trafficking of cultural goods” and as well as “the gravity of crimes that profoundly threaten the integrity of the national cultural heritage, affecting historical memory and collective identity”, according to a press statement.
“Rediscovered Treasures” also represents the outcome of an important investigation and research process through joint effort involving the public prosecutor’s office of Naples, the Carabinieri, and the University of Naples Federico II aimed at verifying the legal status of those 15,000 items in the museum’s storage that were seized and confiscated over several decades.
“The extensive reconnaissance activity has made it possible not only to restore value to a heritage that has long been excluded from public use, but also to effectively document the impact that the phenomena of looting and illicit trafficking have had over time on the conservation and knowledge of the archaeological heritage,” Osanna said in a press statement, translated from Italian to English. “The project is a virtuous example of collaboration between institutions, law enforcement, the academic world and museums, capable of combining protection and enhancement. The finds on display today, finally returned to the community, reaffirm the value of legality as an essential foundation for the protection and transmission of our cultural heritage”.
The Associated Press reported the artifacts included in the exhibition range in age from the Archaic Period (approximately 650 to 480 BC) to the Middle Ages.
For decades, raiders, looters, and antiquities traffickers have focused on extracting and selling Italian artifacts from historically important sites like Pompeii and Herculaneum. The Associated Press also reported that some raiders “even used underwater metal detectors, GPS, sonar and drones to extract treasures from the shipwrecks and archaeological sites submerged in the Mediterranean Sea.”
