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Cultural Restitution

April 4, 2023
VATICAN CITY
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VATICAN CITY

Below is a schedule of restitutions made to or from Vatican City.

Entries are updated regularly.

May 2023

Pope Francis confirms talks are underway to return colonial-era artefacts in the Vatican Museum's collection to Indigenous peoples in Canada, as well as other objects on a 'case by case' basis

AP News


April 2023

Responding to decades of Indigenous demands, the Vatican has formally repudiated the "Doctrine of Discovery" that legitimised the colonial-era seizure of Native lands

AP News


March 2023

In a special Vatican ceremony, the restitution of three stone fragments from the Parthenon was signed off prior to their transfer to Athens on 24 March 2023

The Art Newspaper


December 2022

Pope Francis has ordered the Vatican Museums to return three sculptural fragments removed from the Parthenon in the form of a 'donation' to Greece

AP News


March 2022

Curator of the Ethnological Museum in the Vatican tells leader of an Inuit delegation that the Vatican is open to returning precious cultural items to Canada

CBC News






More News


January 30, 2025
What will it take to break the British Museum’s determination not to explain when an object is ‘unfit to be retained’?
December 1, 2024
There are several reasons why Britain’s new Labour administration may be closer to agreeing a loan of the Parthenon Marbles to Greece than the previous Conservative government, even though a full transfer of ownership remains firmly off the agenda
November 30, 2024
Investigations into the collecting patterns of major US museums has resulted in two immensely readable and influential books covering today’s illegal trade in trafficking antiquities: Chasing Aphrodite and The Medici Conspiracy
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