The Italian Embassy acted as host to the Secretary of Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano, on 29 April 2012. The event was the ceremony for the repatriation to Italy of a number of significant artefacts confiscated in the United States at the request of the Italian authorities.
New Italy-United States agreement
The ceremony, which followed negotiations for a new agreement with the United States, made it possible for the Carabinieri Command for the Protection of the Cultural Heritage to take delivery of “Leda and the Swan”, an oil on copper painted by Lelio Orsi (16th century); a marble Roman sculpture representing the head of Janus (1st century A.D.); three pages of illuminated Gregorian choir-book leaves (13th and 14th centuries); an Attic red-figured vase (5th century B.C.); and an Apulian vase with red figures (4th century B.C.). Read more, in Italian.
