[MSN] Italian police find dozens of artifacts

[MSN]

Italian police find dozens of artifacts

Police in Rome said Tuesday they recovered dozens of looted artifacts, including a fresco believed to have been stripped from an ancient Roman villa.

Police were investigating 31 people who allegedly operated in Italy and France as part of a European art trafficking ring, a police statement said. No arrests had been made.

The remains of the fresco, which was stolen in the 1970s, are believed to belong to the 1st century A.D. villa of the Emperor Nero's wife Poppea in a site near Pompeii, police said in the statement.

The villa is in the area hit by the eruption in AD 79 of Mount Vesuvius, which killed thousands of people and buried Pompeii and neighbouring towns in six metres of volcanic ash.

Also recovered were two 4th century BC vases from the southern region of Apulia and other pottery of Greek origin imported millennia ago by the Etruscan civilization in central Italy.

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