Italy takes back €12million worth of historical artefacts from British Tomb Raider after legal row
A fall from grace for Britain's one time top antiquities dealer
A haul of illegally looted artefacts dating back to the 800 BC have been recovered by Italy following a lengthy legal tussle with a London dealer.
Once Britain’s top antiquities dealer, the now-disgraced Robin Symes, 84, acquired the artefacts from illegal excavations in central and southern Italy, after which they were stored in London facilities.
The restitution comes hot on the heels of Symes’ forced handover of 350 Neolithic and Byzantine objects back to Greece in May.
Symes’ former company, Symes Ltd, is currently being liquidated for those attempting to recover antiquities. The dismantling of Symes’ empire has been painstaking, requiring a joint operation between Italy and Greece.
Symes told the court he held treasures at five storage facilities when in fact he had 29
Reuters
Carabinieri Cmdr. Vincenzo Molinese described Symes as “a man with a thousand faces”, before lauding the effort that went into “nearly 20 years to achieve this result”.
Mario Turetta, general secretary of the Italian culture ministry, said: “When countries play as a team they always get results.”
In 1999, Christo Michaelides, Symes’ partner of 30 years, died after falling down the stairs while the couple holidayed in Umbria.
After his death, the Michaelides family put in a claim for half the antiquities business to which Symes countersued stating Michaelides was only an employee and lost, causing Symes to declare bankruptcy.
The ancient haul included marble busts, Etruscan jewellery, mosaics and a lead-lined sarcophagus
Reuters
In 2005, Symes was sentenced to two years of which he served seven months for contempt of court after lying about the value of two deals.
Symes testified that he had sold an Egyptian stature of the Greek god, Apollo, to a sheikh for £1.1million when in fact the figure was £3.1million.
The antiquities dealer then claimed he held his treasures in five storage facilities when the real number was 29.
In 2016, Italian authorities found 45 crates of stolen Greek, Roman, and Etruscan objects hidden by Symes at the Geneva Freeport storage warehouse.
The collection was unveiled at Rome’s National Museum of Castel Sant’Angelo.
Reuters
Eleni Sourani, the Greek ambassador to Italy, celebrated “a victory in a difficult, complex and lengthy fight against those who try to profit from our history”.
Sourani added: “'For us, there is great satisfaction any time an illegally exported cultural artefact returns to its country of origin.”
The collection was unveiled at a press conference at Rome’s National Museum of Castel Sant’Angelo.
Gennaro Sangiuliano, Italy’s culture minister, hinted that the works will soon be put on display: “What has been returned must never be locked up in deposits but put in museums or displayed through other initiatives, so that it is immediately available to the public.”
The artefacts recovered include ancient marble busts, a decorated lead-lined sarcophagus, Etruscan jewellery made from gold, bronze and amber, mosaic fragments, and clay vases from Pompeii.
Another 71 artefacts recovered from the same Symes collection are to be transferred to Italy from the US in the coming days, with their countries of origin to be determined by Italian and Greek archaeologists.