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Italy retrieves stolen Christopher Columbus' letter on first voyage to Americas

Xinhua, May 19, 2016 Adjust font size:

A stolen letter written by Christopher Columbus on his first voyage of discovery to the Americans was retrieved by Italian and U.S. authorities in Washington, and returned to Italy with an official ceremony held here on Wednesday.

The rare letter was printed in Rome in 1493. It had been stolen from the Riccardiana library in Florence, most probably in the early 1990s, and replaced with a fake, Italian officers said.

The theft was only discovered in 2012, and a joint Italian-American probe was launched.

Police officers found out the original copy had surfaced in New York during an auction in 1992, and purchased by a private for some 400,000 U.S. dollars, Mariano Mossa, chief of Italy's special police unit for cultural heritage protection, told a press conference.

Then, the letter had been donated to the Library of Congress in Washington in 2004, where it was finally verified in its authenticity by the investigators.

Italian Culture Minister Dario Franceschini and U.S. Ambassador to Italy John R. Phillips presided over the repatriation ceremony on Wednesday.

They both agreed on seeing the restitution of the rare missive as "a symbolic event that marks the friendship and strong cooperation between the two countries".

Italian explorer Christopher Columbus carried out the first of his four voyages to the Americas in 1492, marking the beginning of the European colonization of the so-called "New World".

In February 1493, while sailing back to Europe, Columbus wrote about the wonders of his voyage in a letter that was later printed in several copies, and in various languages, in order to spread the news of the "discovery" of the Americas.

Very few of those original printed copies survived, and one of them was the letter stolen from the Florence library and retrieved in the Library of Congress in Washington.

The artefact would be worth around 1 million euros (1.13 million U.S. dollars), according to Italian officials at the press conference.

The letter will now "take back its place in the Riccardiana Library," minister Franceschini stated. Endit