Manhattan D.A. Returns 17 Stolen Artifacts and Rare Books to Italy and Vatican

The Manhattan District Attorney's Office has repatriated 17 stolen cultural artifacts and rare books to Italy and the Vatican in a ceremony this week. The items, valued at over $1.5 million, were recovered through investigations into antiquities trafficking networks. Among the returned objects are six rare 16th–17th century Chinese-language scientific books written by Jesuit missionaries, stolen from the Archives of the Society of Jesus in Vatican City between 1999 and 2002. These books were last documented in the early 1970s, later appeared on the London antiquarian market in 2000, and were seized from the University of Notre Dame in late 2025 after being purchased by a private collector. Other returned items include a 1525 letter from Alfonso I d'Este to Lodovico Ariosto, seized from the Morgan Library, and two ancient Greek ceramic drinking cups from around 500 BC, seized from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Since its establishment in 2017, the D.A.'s Antiquities Trafficking Unit has recovered over 6,200 antiquities valued at more than $485 million and returned more than 5,860 items to 36 countries.