ROME—Italy has been so successful in recovering ancient artworks and artifacts that were illegally exported from the country it has created a museum for them.
The Museum of Rescued Art was inaugurated Wednesday in a cavernous structure that is part of Rome’s ancient Baths of Diocletian. The Octagonal Hall exhibition space was designed to showcase Italy’s efforts, through patient diplomacy and court challenges, to get valuable antiquities repatriated, often after decades in foreign museums or private collections.
Exhibits in the new museum will change every few months as the objects on display return to what experts consider their territory of origin, many of them places that were part of ancient Etruscan or Magna Grecia civilizations in central or southern Italy….