An erotic mosaic panel stolen from Pompeii by a German Nazi captain during the second world war has been returned to the site of the ancient Roman ruins.
The relic, which depicts a pair of lovers and dates from between the middle of the last century BC and the first century AD, had been among the heirlooms of a deceased German citizen who received the mosaic as a gift from a Wehrmacht captain responsible for the German military supply chain in Italy during the war.
The presence of the mosaic in Germany only came to light after the relatives of the deceased contacted Italy’s Carabinieri cultural heritage protection squad in Rome and asked how to return it to the Italian state.
After the unit established the authenticity of the artwork, which is thought to have adorned the floor of a bedroom in a Pompeii home, its repatriation was arranged by the Italian consulate in Stuttgart.
The mosaic will temporarily be kept at the Pompeii Antiquarium, a museum that houses relics found during excavations at the site, pending further studies.
“Every looted artefact that returns is a wound that heals, so we express our gratitude to the protection unit for the work they have done,” said Gabriel Zuchtriegel, the director of Pompeii archaeological park. “The wound lies not so much in the material value of the work but in its historical value, a value that is severely compromised by the illicit trafficking of antiquities.”
The exact provenance of the mosaic is unknown and may never be known, added Zuchtriegel. “But we will conduct further studies and archaeometric analyses to ascertain its authenticity and to reconstruct is history to the extent possible.”
Since its establishment in 1969, the specialist police squad has retrieved more than 3m artworks and relics stolen from Italian cultural sites.
In 2021, six fragments of wall frescoes looted from the ruins of ancient Roman villas in Stabiae, a historical site close to the main Pompeii archaeological park, were returned. The relics had been taken in illegal excavations in the 1970s and exported.
They were traced during a broader investigation into the illicit trafficking of archaeological objects in 2020 and discovered to have been bought by American, Swiss and English antique dealers in the 1990s.
There have also been several cases of tourists stealing relics from Pompeii, only to repent after many years and return the items alongside a letter of apology. In 2020, a Canadian woman sent back pilfered Pompeii fragments, claiming the items were cursed and had caused her years of bad luck.
Pompeii was buried in volcanic ash after the catastrophic eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD79 and lay buried until the 16th century.
