Italy demands return of seven ancient amphorae from the Louvre Palace of Versailles, evacuated due to bomb threat – for the sixth time in a week

Italy demands that France return seven valuable ancient amphorae belonging to the Louvre. Culture Minister Gennaro Sangiuliano said on Sunday at a party event of the right-wing nationalist Fratelli d’Italia party in Rome that the vases had been stolen by the mafia in the port city of Ostia near Rome.

The amphorae date from the fourth to the sixth century BC. According to a report in French newspaper Le Monde, the Louvre acquired the vases between 1982 and 1998, when less emphasis was placed on how sellers came to own them. The current director of the Louvre, Laurence des Cars, recently told Monde that her museum’s collection contained “works of questionable origin.”

In the Louvre you can see the vases from the collection of Greek, Roman and Etruscan art. These include an amphora on a black background from the fifth century BC, which is considered a special masterpiece: on one side a musician in profile plays a zither, on the other side a figure crowned with laurel extends his arm .

(yam/sda/dpa)