Beijing: A total of 56 lost Chinese cultural relics have been returned from Italy, China’s National Cultural Heritage Administration announced on Saturday. This marks another successful cooperation between China and Italy under their bilateral agreement aimed at preventing the illegal import and export of cultural relics.
According to Namibia Press Agency, the return follows the previous repatriation of 796 Chinese cultural relics from Italy in March 2019. In October 2022 and April 2024, the Italian Carabinieri military police informed China about the seizure of 56 suspected Chinese cultural relics. Upon receiving this information, China’s National Cultural Heritage Administration provided detailed identification opinions and legal basis reports to the Italian authorities.
Through diplomatic channels, China officially requested the return of these cultural relics. Italy subsequently decided to return the 56 artifacts. Most of the artifacts were found to have been unearthed in the provinces of Gansu, Qinghai
, and Shaanxi in China. Among them is painted pottery from the Majiayao culture, an ancient Chinese culture dating back more than 5,000 years, providing valuable material evidence for the study of the origin and early development of Chinese civilization.
The returned artifacts also include pottery figurines from the Han (202 B.C.- A.D. 220) and Tang (618-907) dynasties, as well as animal-shaped ceramics from the Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368). Amid China’s intensified efforts to recover cultural relics lost overseas, more than 2,100 pieces or sets of artifacts have been successfully brought back over the past 12 years.