A first-century marble bust believed stolen from an Italian museum was returned to the Italian government in a ceremony on August 5. The Manhattan DA's Antiquities Trafficking Unit seized the bust from Safani Gallery in 2018 after being notified by Italian law enforcement. The bust, identified as the "Head of Alexander," was excavated in the early 1900s along Rome's Via Sacra and was labeled as "missing" by a local museum. While not in pristine condition, it holds significant value, potentially worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.
The DA's office had been notified of the stolen bust by law enforcement in Italy, probably the Carabinieri, which has its own art and antiquities crime unit, because someone in Italy had seen that this gallery in New York had it.
In many ways, this incident is a by-the-books case of stolen or looted property from abroad that finds its way to New York City, where so much of the cultural property trade takes place.
The bust, identified in court papers as the 'Head of Alexander', was excavated in the early 1900s by Italian archaeologists along the Via Sacra, a main thoroughfare linking the Capitoline Hill to the Colosseum in central Rome.
The head is valuable, but not in the millions of dollars, maybe in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.
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