A 2,000-year-old Roman gravestone spent decades as a garden ornament in New Orleans before authorities realized it had been looted from Italy.
The carved limestone slab, which once marked the grave of a Roman woman named Scribonia, was found by a homeowner in the backyard of a house in the city's Broadmoor neighborhood. The current resident had no idea the stone was ancient. He had inherited it when he bought the property in 2022.
How a Roman relic ended up in a Louisiana garden
The gravestone dates to the first century B.C. or first century A.D. It bears an inscription reading "Scribonia, daughter of Caeso, farewell." Investigators believe it was stolen from an archaeological site in Italy sometime in the 1960s or 1970s. It then crossed the Atlantic and ended up in New Orleans, where it was placed in a backyard. The homeowner who discovered it contacted the FBI after he began researching the stone's origins. Agents from the FBI's art crime team examined the artifact and confirmed it was looted.
A formal handover at the Italian consulate
The gravestone was formally returned to Italian officials during a ceremony at the Italian consulate in New Orleans. The consul general of Italy in New Orleans, Nicola De Santis, accepted the artifact on behalf of the Italian government. The stone will now be sent back to Italy, where it will eventually be displayed in a museum. Local residents in New Orleans expressed surprise that such an old object had been sitting unnoticed in their midst for so long. The case highlights how looted antiquities can surface in unexpected places, far from their original homes.
This repatriation is one of many recent efforts by Italian authorities to recover cultural property taken from the country illegally. The gravestone's journey from a Roman cemetery to a Louisiana backyard and back again is a reminder that the past can turn up anywhere, even under a pile of leaves.
