Tomorrow morning at 10.30 at the Bishop’s Palace of the Diocese of Imola the Carabinieri will return to the Curia a 19th century papal letter, stolen on an unspecified date from the city’s Diocesan Archives. The important document, dated 29 December 1856 and concerning a letter sent by Pius IX to Cardinal Gaetano Baluffi, bishop of Imola, will be delivered by the Cultural Heritage Protection Unit of Naples, a specialized department of the Army which carried out the investigations, into the hands of Bishop of Imola and the director of the Diocesan office. The archival asset was intercepted and seized before it was finally sold online by a private individual from the province of Parma. During the investigations at the same seller, other archival assets attributable to the State Archives of Naples were also found, which gave rise to the investigation for receiving stolen goods of cultural assets to the detriment of the Campania book and archival heritage. The important recovery was originated from the constant monitoring of the E-commerce, Deep Web and Dark Web site platforms, through the help of the “Database of illicitly stolen cultural assets”, the largest database of works of art stolen from the world managed by the Command for the Protection of Cultural Heritage, in which cultural goods are often the subject of illegal trade.
