The exhibition is the result of a complex process of investigation and research, carried out as part of the protocol agreement between the MANN and the Public Prosecutor’s Office of Naples.
It reveals the dynamics underpinning the illicit trade in cultural objects and the irreversible damage suffered by heritage.
The exhibition includes five sections. It starts with a focus on collecting, a historical practice which has often fueled illegal excavations and trafficking, resulting in the dispersal of countless archaeological contexts.
The next section explores the main routes of trafficking, the mechanisms of illicit exportation and the strategies adopted to counter its spread. It continues with an in-depth analysis of judicial and investigative cases that have had great media coverage.
The last section focuses on the phenomenon of forgeries, with a final consideration of the irreparable loss of stolen and never recovered masterpieces.
On display an extraordinarily heterogeneous selection of about 600 artefacts, from the Archaic Age to the Middle Ages, from Southern Italy and beyond: pottery, bronze objects, figurative terracottas, marble decorations, underwater finds and Greek, Roman and
medieval coins.
