Art history

A Roman-era marble portrait head has been handed over to the Greek state by the Archaeological Museum of the University of Munster in Germany after tests confirmed concerns about the legality of its provenance and is now on display at the Archaeological Museum of Thessaloniki. 

A rare bronze couch dating back to 530 B.C., which was removed from a grave near the western province of Manisa during illegal excavations and smuggled abroad, has been returned to Türkiye by the J. Paul Getty Museum in the U.S. The number of artifacts brought to the country this year has reached 36.

May 1945: American servicemen view art treasures on show at a former Luftwaffe barracks near Konigsee. Priceless paintings looted from all parts of Europe under orders from Hermann Goering.

The German government said on July 24 that it would make it easier for the victims of Nazi persecution to enforce claims for the restitution of artworks taken by the regime.

Italy was returned 600 antiquities that were looted or stolen from its territory by the US at a ceremony

A painting by Italian master Caravaggio, once mistakenly thought to be by an unknown artist and nearly auctioned off for a song, was unveiled at Madrid's Prado Museum on May 27.

Italy has celebrated the return of around 600 antiquities from the US, including ancient bronze statues, gold coins, mosaics and manuscripts valued at 60 million euros, that were looted years ago, sold to US museums, galleries and collectors and recovered as a result of criminal investigations.

A regional laboratory in the southeastern province of Diyarbakır, home of many different civilizations spanning thousands of years, has performed maintenance and repair works on approximately 1,252 artifacts in 2023 to shed light on cultural history and exhibit them in museums.

It would be too easy to comment that the theft of antiquities from the British Museum, allegedly by a staff member who has since been sacked, is a sign of divine providence: the repository of much of humanity's history, some of it of dubious provenance or evident theft, is getting a taste of its own medicine, and proving to be a far less adequate custodian of that incomparable treasure than it

Polykleitos Rengos (1903-1984) is the subject of an exhibition at the Byzantine Museum (byzantinemuseum.gr) that casts light on his important contribution to the reintroduction of the Byzantine and post-Byzantine tradition in religious painting.

The Orthodox world celebrates one of the great Christian holidays - the Entry of the Lord into Jerusalem. Days before his death on the Cross, Jesus Christ was solemnly welcomed in the holy city. The crowd greeted him with palm branches. This is how the tradition of distributing consecrated willow branches in temples was established.