The Carabinieri of the Command for the Protection of Cultural Heritage have recovered a Roman marble statue depicting a ‘Togatus’, a work of the first century BC, already placed in the park of Villa Marini Dettina in Rome, from which it was stolen about 10 years ago. The important recovery is the result of an investigative activity coordinated by the Rome Public Prosecutor’s Office – Protection of artistic heritage pool – and conducted by the Archeology Section of the Operational Department of the Carabinieri Command for the Protection of Cultural Heritage.
the statue, stolen by unknown persons in November 2011, was identified by two soldiers from the Archeology Section who, as part of international investigations, were in Brussels (Belgium). Free from service, at the end of the daily activities, browsing the streets of the Sablon district full of antique shops and antiques, the two carabinieri noticed, in one of these shops, a marble statue probably coming from Italy, damaged in more parts probably due to the blows suffered by the excavation tools. Suspicious, on their return to Italy and in collaboration with the Data Processing Section, they compared the photographic images acquired in Brussels with the files of the Leonardo Data Bank of illicitly stolen cultural assets that allowed the statue to be traced back to the one removed from Villa Marini Dettina.
The important sculpture was then seized at the disposal of the Public Prosecutor’s Office of Rome following a European Investigation Order accepted by the Belgian authorities and repatriated last February. Subsequently, the investigations also developed abroad in collaboration with the Direction Generale de l’Inspection Economique du SPF Economie of Belgium, highlighted an illicit trafficking of cultural goods belonging to an Italian trader, who used a Spanish pseudonym for criminal activities. , which was reported to the Public Prosecutor’s Office of Rome for receiving stolen goods and illicit exportation of the statue. The Roman sculpture, which depicts a ‘Togatus’, a very high historical-artistic expression of the Italian cultural heritage, has a purely commercial estimate valued at around one hundred thousand euros.