The Museum of Saved Art, containing the latest treasures Italy's crack art cops have recovered from Europe and America over the last three years, reopened at the Octagonal Hall of Diocletian's Baths in Rome on Thursday.
    The "new recoveries" include gentle faces of Etruscan female characters who have rested on alabaster cinerary urns for centuries; part of what has been renamed the London and New York Treasury, built for years by a well-known British antique dealer, who fled overseas; parade helmets and bronze breastplates, which still echo with blood and triumphs, recognized thanks to the photographic images of the Carabinieri database.
    Or the Potnia-Theron, the goddess who tamed beasts that stands out on the antefix and that from the Hellenistic sanctuary of Ardea south of Rome arrived, passing through the black market, to the Israel Museum in Jerusalem.
    These are just some of the wonders that are the protagonists of the Museum of Salvaged Art which has reopened to the public, with a new exhibition itinerary entitled, precisely, New Recoveries.
    In all, over 100 works from the 9th century BC.

to the 3rd century AD, recovered from the illicit market or repatriated from the USA and several European countries between 2022 and 2025 by the Carabinieri Command for the Protection of Cultural Heritage.
    Treasures whose voices had been "silenced" by the international network of criminals, but which now also tell great stories of investigations, seizures, arrests and international agreements.
    "The recovery of a work - explains the interim director of the National Roman Museum, Edith Gabrielli - does not end only with its return, but with the restitution of its meaning".
    "The Museum of Salvaged Art", which reopens after the exhibition in 2021 of the Group of Orpheus and the Sirens returned from the Getty in Malibu and then destined for the Archaeological Museum of Taranto, "also has a symbolic value - explains the Head of the Department for the Protection of Cultural Heritage, Luigi La Rocca - because it makes perceptible the restitution to the community of goods of all, which otherwise would have been destined to satisfy the interest of a few".
    The new "collection" will now be exhibited until August 31st with free admission and then included in the ticket of the National Roman Museum, while the works will subsequently be placed in public museums in the (sometimes presumed) areas of origin.
    "This museum is an outpost of legality, especially for young people - adds the Head of the Department for the Promotion of Cultural Heritage, Alfonsina Russo - These are works rescued from oblivion.

Here their voice can be heard again".
    Among the pieces that arouse the most curiosity are the richly decorated cinerary urns from the 3rd century BC attributable to an illegal excavation in Città Della Pieve in Umbria..
    But there is also the bronze statue of a mature togatus, recovered with Operation Fenice in Belgium, which, says Russo, "comes from Perugia and is stylistically close to the fabled ancient Roman bronze works of the Sanctuary of San Casciano dei Bagni in Tuscany.
    It probably belongs to another sacred area unknown to us".
    "In fifty-five years of work, the CCTPC (Carabinieri art recovery unit) have recovered three million works of art - says General Francesco Gargaro - but in our database there are still 1.3 million to be found, today also with the help of artificial intelligence".
    Also on display are the five marble theater masks from the 1st century AD, returned by an American collector and "arrived in Italy just two days ago, among the 114 works recently recovered from the USA".
    Thanks to an international agreement, between the end of 2023 and the beginning of 2024 alone, over 600 works have returned from the United States.
   

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