![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/c412c5e5347f2a189215e1cad6b2be6d5789d016-2528x1688.jpg\"\/)
<\/p>\nItalian authorities have returned 27 archaeological artefacts to Mexico after they were recovered during multiple investigations conducted across Italy. The artefacts had been illegally imported, unlawfully sold or held by private owners without documentation proving legitimate ownership, a police press release says.<\/p>\n
Items including ancient terracotta and clay figurines, traditional sculptures of heads and fossils were handed over during a ceremony at the Mexican embassy in Rome led by officials of the Carabinieri Tutela del Patrimonio Culturale (TPC), Italy’s art hit squad that conducted the investigations.<\/p>\n
In its press release, the Carabinieri TPC said that all of the objects originated from \u201cplaces of significant historical and cultural interest\u201d in Mexico, adding that they had a collective value of \u201cseveral tens of thousands of euros\u201d. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe return to the Mexican people of precious and unique artefacts, which were previously believed to have been lost, restores a sense of identity to the places from which they had been unlawfully taken,\u201d the Carabinieri TPC said in the press release.<\/p>\n
The objects were found following six separate investigations. In one case in Florence, Carabinieri were tipped off by Peruvian authorities who had spotted a suspicious sale on an e-commerce platform, allowing Italian officials to seize 16 illegally imported artefacts from a private home.<\/p>\n
In another investigation in Venice, officials seized three fossilised fish dating from the Upper Cretaceous period (100.5 million years ago to 66 million years ago) after searching a shipment that had arrived from the city of Santa Catarina in northeastern Mexico. Carabinieri said the fossils were \u201cin an excellent state of preservation\u201d and of \u201cinestimable historical and scientific value\u201d.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
One of the fossilised fish dating from the Upper Cretaceous period that was recovered in Venice<\/p>\n
Courtesy of Carabinieri Tutela del Patrimonio Culturale<\/p>\n
Rome officials also seized two terracotta statues dating from the Early Mesoamerican Classic period (100-400 AD) and attributed to to the Maya civilisation. In Milan and nearby Monza, Carabinieri sequestered objects including three Teotihuacan heads produced in the Central Mexican Plateau between 200 BC and 650 AD following an inventory of a private individual’s estate last year.<\/p>\n
In 2024, Italy returned a larger group<\/a> of 101 archaeological artefacts to Mexico including anthropomorphic and zoomorphic statuettes carved from hard stone, small black ceramic vases and an Aztec decorative clay stamp depicting a human sacrifice. To date, Italy has restituted a total of<\/a> more than 1,000 artworks and artefacts to the North American country, according to the website of the Italy embassy in Mexico City.<\/p>\n Vito Polizzi, an archaeologist at Palermo University whose research focuses on archaeological cooperation between Italy and Mexico, told The Art Newspaper that Mexico’s vast territory and the sheer number of archaeological sites containing Maya, Aztec, Zapotec and Totonac artefacts make it difficult to prevent looting, allowing theft and illicit trafficking to remain widespread.<\/p>\n Italy and Mexico have a strong record of working together on art recovery. Polizzi says the Carabinieri TPC has intensified its collaboration with law enforcement agencies across the Americas in recent years, contributing to a rise in restitutions to Mexico. In 2017, Carabinieri TPC signed an agreement<\/a> for training members of the Mexican Federal Police Force and providing strategic advice. <\/p>\n Polizzi adds that these efforts have been complemented by cultural initiatives, including a 2024 exhibition at Rome’s Scuderie del Quirinale featuring artefacts from 20 major Mexican museums.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Italian authorities have returned 27 archaeological artefacts to Mexico after they were recovered during multiple investigations conducted across…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":33153,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[7500,5,21525],"class_list":["post-33152","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-italy","tag-art-crime","tag-italy","tag-restitution"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33152","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33152"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33152\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33153"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33152"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33152"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33152"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}