Italy creates new museum for trafficked ancient artifacts

By FRANCES D’EMILIO
Associated Press

ROME (AP) — Italy has been so successful in recovering illegally exported ancient artworks and artifacts that it has created a museum just for them. The Museum of Rescued Art was inaugurated on Wednesday in the cavernous Octagonal Hall of Rome’s Baths of Diocletian. The exhibition space was designed to showcase Italy’s efforts, through patient diplomacy and court challenges, to get valuable antiquities repatriated from foreign museums or private collections. Exhibits in the new museum are set to change every few months as the objects on display return to what experts consider their territory of origin. The inaugural exhibit revolves around some 100 of 260 artifacts recovered by a national police art squad from the United States.