Italy has recovered a huge Roman funerary monument in a police coup hailed as a sign that art smugglers' days are numbered.
The monument, decorated with a terrifically vivid portrayal of gladiatorial combat, was found hidden in the countryside north of Rome, cut into pieces for sale on the antiquities' market.
Its archeological value is "exceptional," Italian Culture Minister Francesco Rutelli said. Italy's crack art police, the Carabinieri's Cultural Heritage Protection Unit, has been on the trail of the 12 sculpted marble slabs for three years.
The fact that such a tempting object was on the black market for so long, with buyers obviously afraid to go near it, "shows how hard it now is to place plundered masterpieces," Rutelli said. "The noose is tightening around the art traffickers," said Rutelli, who has pledged to boost efforts to end art theft.
The fight is being waged on two fronts: ever more determined and high-tech police operations, and tough talking abroad to get looted antiquities back.
Numerous arrests have been made in connection with the latest find and the art cops are now pursuing international leads, Carabinieri sources said.
Tomb raiders may have been forced to seek buyers for it in previously untapped markets, police indicated.
Alternatively, they may have been casting around for receivers willing to take bits of the monument.
The funerary monument, which dates from the First Century BC, is in fact "a veritable mine of material," police said.
Apart from the gladiatorial frieze, it features a range of fine sculpture including several elaborate cornices and the base of a large statue.
But it is "missing various parts," police said. The art cops have landed a string of big hauls lately.
Earlier this month they recovered a haul of Etruscan and Roman tomb plunder from a goldsmith's luxury villa outside Arezzo. In December they tracked down two magnificent Roman artefacts after decades of detective work - a marble head of the sex-and-wine god Dionysus and a headless statue of a toga-garbed figure.
The head of Dionysus was intercepted as it was about to go under the hammer at Christie's in New York.
As well as tightening the screw on antiquities trafficking, Italy has signed landmark agreements with major American galleries to get looted works back and thus discourage tomb raiders.
Twelve months ago, an accord with New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art dealt a major blow to art trafficking.
Under the deal, Italy recovered some of the Met's finest pieces in return for the promise of loans of equivalent value.
Italian Culture Minister Francesco Rutelli inked a carbon-copy accord with the Boston Museum of Fine Arts last month - while the minister is optimistic about reviving stalled talks aimed at securing a similar deal with the Los Angeles-based John Paul Getty Museum.
Italian authorities have prosecuted a former Getty Museum curator, Marion True, for allegedly receiving stolen artefacts.
The Rome proceedings are the world's first such trial of a US art official.
