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January 6, 2011

Morgantina Silver returned to Sicily by New York’s Metropolitan Museum

Posted at 10:22 pm in Similar cases

The Met has been hitting the headlines fairly regularly with news of positive decisions on restitution cases. The latest artefact return involving the New York museum is the Morgantina Silver, following an agreement reached in 2006 allowing them joint custody of it with the Aidone Archaeological Museum.

From:
New York Times

A Trove of Ancient Silver Said to Be Stolen Returns to Its Home in Sicily
By ELISABETTA POVOLEDO
Published: December 5, 2010

AIDONE, Italy — They came in throngs. On Friday afternoon hundreds of residents from this tiny hilltop town in eastern Sicily excitedly trekked up the steep slope to the town’s archaeology museum to celebrate the return to Aidone of a treasure trove that was buried nearby some 2,200 years ago and illegally whisked away in more recent times.

This year this cache of 16 Hellenistic silver-gilt objects known as the Morgantina silver was on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. For decades archaeologists, magistrates and eventually the Italian government had attempted to convince the museum that the pieces had been illegally excavated 30 years ago from Morgantina, an ancient Greek settlement whose ruins lie next to Aidone.
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