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Germany returns Ancient Roman bust to Italy

The marble bust of a Roman youth was returned to Italy this week for the first time since it was smuggled out over 50 years ago.

Germany returns Ancient Roman bust to Italy
The Roman head returned to Italy this week. Photo: Ministero per i beni e le attività culturali

The ancient sculpture, which disappeared from Italy sometime between 1944 and the early 1960s, was handed back to the Italian Ministry of Culture in a ceremony at the German ambassador's residence on Wednesday. 

READ ALSO: Ancient marble head of god Dionysus discovered under Rome

First unearthed in the 1930s in the city of Fondi between Rome and Naples, it dates from the second century AD and depicts the head and part of the shoulders of a young man.

It has spent the past 55 years in the University of Munster's Archaeological Museum, whose then director acquired it from a private citizen.


Photo: Ministero per i beni e le attività culturali (MiBAC)

Germany offered to return it without being asked, according to Italy's culture minister.

“This is a highly symbolic act,” said Alberto Bonisoli, who described it as a sign of the two countries' shared commitment to protecting cultural heritage.

“Italy is not only in the position of reclaiming stolen works of art, but when circumstances demand it, we're among the first to return works belonging to other countries' cultural heritage,” the minister declared.

READ ALSO: 

With centuries of art and artefacts strewn all over Italy, many pieces have been lost over the years to thieves, traffickers and natural disasters. Italian police are some of the world's best at hunting down stolen works, with a specialized unit known as the 'Art Squad' devoted to tracking and protecting lost treasures.

But the new owners aren't always keen to give them back. Among the most notable disputes is Italy's ongoing tussle with the Getty Museum in the United States over the Statue of a Victorious Youth – better known as the Getty Bronze – which the American institution refuses to return despite a ruling by Italy's highest court that it was removed from Italy illegally.

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TODAY IN FRANCE

France to compensate relatives of Algerian Harki fighters

France has paved the way towards paying reparations to more relatives of Algerians who sided with France in their country's independence war but were then interned in French camps.

France to compensate relatives of Algerian Harki fighters

More than 200,000 Algerians fought with the French army in the war that pitted Algerian independence fighters against their French colonial masters from 1954 to 1962.

At the end of the war, the French government left the loyalist fighters known as Harkis to fend for themselves, despite earlier promises it would look after them.

Trapped in Algeria, many were massacred as the new authorities took revenge.

Thousands of others who fled to France were held in camps, often with their families, in deplorable conditions that an AFP investigation recently found led to the deaths of dozens of children, most of them babies.

READ ALSO Who are the Harkis and why are they still a sore subject in France?

French President Emmanuel Macron in 2021 asked for “forgiveness” on behalf of his country for abandoning the Harkis and their families after independence.

The following year, a law was passed to recognise the state’s responsibility for the “indignity of the hosting and living conditions on its territory”, which caused “exclusion, suffering and lasting trauma”, and recognised the right to reparations for those who had lived in 89 of the internment camps.

But following a new report, 45 new sites – including military camps, slums and shacks – were added on Monday to that list of places the Harkis and their relatives were forced to live, the government said.

Now “up to 14,000 (more) people could receive compensation after transiting through one of these structures,” it said, signalling possible reparations for both the Harkis and their descendants.

Secretary of state Patricia Miralles said the decision hoped to “make amends for a new injustice, including in regions where until now the prejudices suffered by the Harkis living there were not recognised”.

Macron has spoken out on a number of France’s unresolved colonial legacies, including nuclear testing in Polynesia, its role in the Rwandan genocide and war crimes in Algeria.

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