Greece: Return of stolen artifacts

Greece’s efforts to recover stolen artifacts from private collections and museums are yielding tangible results.

Athens has announced the return of hundreds of artifacts, including a 2nd-century bronze statue of Alexander the Great. According to official data, writes Air Force, the find was discovered after a lawsuit with the company of a British antiquities dealer. Participating in a network of illegal traders, Robin Simes amassed a collection of thousands of items.

For many years, Greece has fought and continues to fight to recover stolen artefacts from museums and private collections around the world. Lina Mendoni, Minister of Culture of Greece, has announced the repatriation of 351 items from the Simes collection after a seventeen-year(!) legal battle.

She did not say if the artifacts were related to the 2016 discovery by Italian and Swiss police of archaeological treasures said to have been stored by Simes in a Geneva freeport in Switzerland.

Undoubtedly, the most “loud” works of art in the debate about whether museums should return objects to their countries of origin are the sculptures of the Parthenon. They were removed from the Parthenon temple in Athens in the early 19th century. Negotiations for their return are progressing.

And in March Vatican returned three fragments of the Athenian Parthenon temple, which he kept for centuries. The gift is a personal decision of Pope Francis to Archbishop of Athens and All Greece Jerome. Three marble fragments from the temple represent part of the head of a young man, one of the two horses pulling the chariot of the goddess Athena, and a male figure with a beard belonging to the southern metope, which depicts a centauromachy. The marble fragments from Mount Penteli are part of the decoration of the Parthenon, a temple built on the Acropolis in Athens by Pericles (447-432 BC).

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