In Italian director Alice Rohrwacher’s 2023 film La chimera, Arthur (Josh O’Connor) is a British archaeologist-turned-tomb raider working in central Italy. Together with a band of misfits, Arthur digs ruthlessly in search of buried treasures for commercial gain.
The film is a case of art imitating life: Since 1969, the Carabinieri Command for the Protection of Cultural Heritage (affectionately known as the “art squad”) has worked alongside the Ministry of Culture and international partners to defeat the “Arthurs” of the world — thieves, looters, grave robbers, unscrupulous art dealers — by tracking down and bringing home trafficked or unlawfully obtained fine art and antiquities. Now, a portion of this lost patrimony is on display at the recently reopened Museum of Rescued Art, a rotating showcase of repatriated objects housed in the Octagonal Hall of the Baths of Diocletian in Rome.
New Recoveries for public discovery
Inaugurated in summer 2022, the Museum of Rescued Art does not have a permanent collection but instead showcases repatriated works on a rotating basis. The current lineup is only the second round. Titled Nuovi recuperi (New Recoveries), it opened to the public in July and comprises around 100 objects secured between 2022 and 2025 and dating from the ninth century BCE up to the third century CE. At the end of the cycle, exhibited items will be sent back to their places of origin, according to the museum.
Here are some highlights in the collection of pillaged pieces.
Ceretan painted slabs
Repatriated from New York, these beautifully painted terracotta slabs originated in Cerveteri, an Etruscan necropolis near Rome. The smuggled slabs were identified as belonging to the same series seized in Geneva by operation Antiche dimore in 2014.
Bronze breastplates and armor
Believed to have been nabbed during illegal excavations of Magna-Grecia necropolises, a pair of Greek Age bronze breastplates and small series of parade helmets were trafficked through an international network that eventually took them to auction houses in New York, where they were finally turned over to authorities.
Bronze statuette
A Hellenistic bronze sculpture in the collection, recovered during a 2023 operation targeting an international art dealer in Belgium, depicts a toga-wearing magistrate and is thought to have originated near Perugia. The figure stands out for its baldness and for a dedication inscription in Etruscan; stylistically, it’s similar to one of the sculptures uncovered in the recent extraordinary excavations at San Casciano dei Bagni, Tuscany.
Umbrian urns
In 2015, a farmer in Città della Pieve stumbled upon an elaborate Etruscan hypogeum while plowing the land. Four funerary urns and two sarcophagi, all apparently linked to male figures of the noble Pulfna family, were recovered at the time.
Nearly a decade later, in April 2024, Perugian authorities launched an investigation in the vicinity after the national “art squad” obtained photographs of Etruscan funerary urns circulating on the black market — compelling evidence that other tombs not only existed in the area, but had been plundered. The investigation focused on a businessperson who owned land adjacent to the Pulfna site and ran a company equipped to carry out earthworks. Through methods that included wire tapping and drone surveillance, investigators intercepted eight alabaster urns, each depicting reclining female figures, and two sarcophagi, just ahead of their entry onto the black market. The “sting” marked one of the most significant recoveries of Etruscan artifacts ever made during an investigation; visitors to the Rome museum can reap the rewards.
Potnia-Theron
An antefix depicting Potnia-Theron, the Greek goddess who tamed beasts, is another standout piece in the collection. The artifact was found during scientific excavations at the Hellenistic sanctuary in Ardea south of Rome but likely pilfered from storerooms of the former Archaeological Superintendency of Lazio. Passed through the black market, it wound up at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, where it was identified in 2013 on the heels of an investigation coordinated by Rome’s public prosecutors’ office. It was repatriated in 2022 through a cultural diplomacy agreement.
Citizens in action
An entire section highlights objects returned voluntarily and spontaneously by ordinary people who became aware of the historical and cultural value of their possessions, in what the museum calls “a testament to growing sensitivity toward the protection of shared cultural patrimony.”
If you go
Museum of Rescued Art
Housed at the Baths of Diocletian, part of the National Roman Museum circuit
Via Giuseppe Romita 8, Rome
Open 9.30am-7pm, Tuesday to Sunday
To celebrate the reopening, admission to the Museum of Salvaged Art is free until August 31, 2025. Beginning September 1, 2025, access will be included in the National Roman Museum entry ticket.
Website
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