The United States has returned more than 250 ancient artefacts including sculptures and paintings to Italy.
The art unit of Italy’s police force found the items had been looted and sold to US museums and private collectors in the 1990s.
Paintings, pots and sculptures up to 3,000 years old were among the haul.
Several of the mosaics alsone are worth tens of millions of euros.
The oldest item dates back to the Villanovan age (1000 - 750BC), while other artefacts were from the Etruscan civilisation (800 - 200BC), Magna Graecia (750 - 400BC) and Imperial Rome (27BC - 476AD).
The stolen items were sold through a series of dealers with one selection allegedly being offered to the Menil Collection, a museum in Houston, Texas.
A spokesperson for the Manil Museum said it had been offered the artefacts as a gift, but instead referred the donor to Italy’s culture ministry.
The ministry said the owner of the collection “spontaneously” returned the items after police found that they had come from illegal excavations of archaeological sites.
Separately, the ministry said that 145 of the returned artefacts had come from a bankruptcy procedure against an English antiques dealer.
Italy has long sought to track down antiques and artefacts that have been stolen and sold to private collectors and museums.
In September 2022, New York returned $19m (£16m) worth of stolen art to Italy, including a marble head of the goddess Athena dated 200BC, worth an estimated $3m alone.
