A major Australian university has revealed some artefacts in its Classics Museum were stolen from Italy, with one likely smuggled out in bundles of pasta. The Australian National University says several of the items are more than two thousand years old and it's agreed to return them to Italy.
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00:00 The pride of the ANU Classics Museum is this rare amphora.
00:06 It dates from around about 530 BCE, so it's over two and a half thousand years old.
00:11 It's a very special piece.
00:13 So it came as a shock when Italian authorities told them it had been stolen
00:17 before the University bought it in good faith in 1984.
00:21 You have, for example, in Italy, the tomborolli, literally tomb robbers,
00:25 but these are illegal excavators who source material for dealers.
00:29 The ANU opened up its catalogue to Italian officials
00:32 and they discovered another piece the University bought in the '80s
00:35 had been smuggled out by a key player in the illegal antiques trade.
00:39 David Holland Swindler, who was a food exporter,
00:43 and what he'd do is he'd source illicit material from Italy
00:47 and smuggle it out of Italy amongst Italian foods.
00:50 The University has since discovered a mystery third item
00:53 it bought from a British broker in the '60s
00:56 that was originally stolen from a Vatican collection in Rome.
01:00 So how an object that came from a museum that shut in 1970
01:04 ended up in an Australian collection in 1968, we really don't know.
01:09 Once a specialist art squad within the Italian military
01:12 proved the ownership of the items, the ANU agreed to return them.
01:16 However, the Italians have allowed this piece to remain at the University
01:19 for another four years.
01:21 A special piece of history that will eventually find its way home.
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