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May 29, 2023

Italy Displays 750 Artifacts Recovered from Art Dealer Robin Symes Worth $12.9M

Italy recently displayed 750 artifacts, estimated to be worth $12.9 million, that its Culture Ministry and heritage police officers had recovered from the liquidated company of convicted art dealer

Italy recently displayed 750 artifacts, estimated to be worth $12.9 million, that its Culture Ministry and heritage police officers had recovered from the liquidated company of convicted art dealer Robin Symes.

The artifacts—dating from the 8th century BCE through the Middle Ages—included clay vases, clothing elements, precious metals and jewels, weapons, tools, furnishings, sarcophagi, funerary urns, detailed mosaics, painted decorations, as well as a variety of statues in bronze, marble and limestone.

The illegally exported items came from “clandestine exacavations” and “offer a cross-section of the many productions of ancient Italy and the islands,” including “numerous and diversified archaeological contexts (funerary, cultural, residential and public) … concentrated in particular in Etruria and Magna Graecia,” according to a statement from the Ministry of Culture.

The most valuable artifacts were identified as a bronze tripod table, two parade horse headboards from the Appulo-Lucan area, two funerary paintings, several Imperial-age marble heads, as well as a wall painting depicting a small temple likely taken from a Vesuvian residence.

The items were recovered from the English company Robin Symes Ltd through an investigation by the Carabinieri cultural heritage police, in collaboration with the Italian Culture Ministry, the State Attorney General and the Italian Embassy in London. According to a press release, the company belonging to Symes had opposed “repeated recovery attempts” by the Italian Judicial Authority, and was also sued in Italy through the State Attorney General.

The repatriated items were presented during a press conference at the National Museum of Castel Sant’Angelo in Rome on May 31 led by Minister of Culture Gennaro Sangiuliano and the head of the Carrabinieri, Vincenzo Molinese.

Symes’ legacy of trafficking antiquities also popped up last month when Greece recovered 351 antiquities also from the art dealer’s liquidated company after a 17-year legal battle and the Manhattan District Attorney’s office repatriated an item to Iraq. Symes was convicted of contempt of court for lying about antiquities he held in storage locations around the world in 2005. He sentenced to two years in prison, but only served seven months.