A new era has opened for the return of looted Italian art from around the world, Culture Minister Francesco Rutelli believes.
"We mean to get back all the art that has been pillaged over the years," Rutelli said after a US visit that swung the process into gear.
"Italy claims these objects and will make every effort to have them returned".
In talks with major US museums like the Metropolitan Museum (the Met) and the Boston Museum of Fine Arts (MFA), Rutelli started putting some of the details into agreements under which institutions will return works in exchange for loans of equivalent value.
Speaking with Met Director Philippe de Montebello, he announced that a series of major exhibitions will be lined up, as well as collaboration on future archaeological digs that should frighten tomb raiders away.
Italy has already loaned the Met a fine Greek calyx (drinking cup) after inking a groundbreaking accord earlier this year.
The February 21 agreement with the famous New York museum ended a 25-year wrangle over disputed antiquities.
The objects included one of the Met's gems, a sixth-century BC painted vase called the Euphronios Krater.
It is widely regarded as one of the finest examples of its kind.
Italian art police presented the Met with strong evidence that the red and black terracotta vase was stolen from the Etruscan burial site of Cerveteri near Rome in the early '70s.
The agreement also covered four ancient vases from Apulia (present-day Puglia) and a large collection of silverware stolen from Morgantina.
The vases will come home shortly, the Krater by January 15 2008, and the silverware by January 15 2010.
De Montebello has said he already has a "wish list" of loans.
As for the MFA in Boston, other joint projects are in the pipeline and the Italian government has just loaned a dazzling two-metre high statue of a Roman goddess
Experts say it is equal in accomplishment to a statue of Aphrodite that is still the source of friction with the other US museum with a sizeable Greek and Roman collection from Italy, the John Paul Getty Museum in California.
The Getty recently said it had no objection to returning the statue if conclusive proof of provenance is established.
It said Italy could have the statue back within a year unless the Getty proves its case.
But it has dug its heels in over another masterpiece, a magnificent bronze statue of an athlete.
The masterpiece, attributed to the Greek sculptor Lysippos, was acquired in 1977.
Last week the Getty broke off talks on a restitution-loans deal with Italy, citing the Lysippos bronze as a major sticking point.
But Rutelli is optimistic negotiations can be restarted and is expected to accept Getty director Michael Brand's invitation to visit the Getty Villa at Pacific Palisades which houses the athlete and the Aphrodite.
It is not clear whether another 26 works on the original 46-long roster will be withheld, or will come home as agreed.
The Met and the MFA are public institutions and as such are under strong moral pressure to strike deals with Italy.
Italy is having more trouble with private New York collector Shelby White, who has some 20 works of disputed provenance.
Rutelli said talks with White would begin over the next few days.
In a mark of his confidence that things are on the mend, however, Rutelli chose New York to present one of Italy's most remarkable recent finds, a golden-handled globe believed to be the ruling sceptre of the Emperor Maxentius.
The emperor, whose historic defeat by Constantine in 312 AD paved the way for Christianity to become Rome's official religion, hid the sceptre on the eve of the historic battle.
It was recently unearthed at the foot of Rome's Palatine Hill and will find a permanent home shortly.
Rutelli showed it to the New York cultural elite along with two other marble orbs which, surmounted with the Imperial Roman eagle, are thought to have once formed part of sceptres of power.
"Unlike the tomb raider's swag, which ended up at the far corners of the earth, these discoveries will be brought together at a prestigious exhibition space," Rutelli said, hinting they would be part of future loan projects also.
Italy has already begun putting on show archaeological finds recently returned to Italy after years in the US.
In November the Getty, reputedly the world's richest museum, returned three of 52 allegedly stolen Italian treasures it had acquired.
A former curator of the John Paul Getty Museum, Marion True, is on trial in Rome for allegedly acquiring stolen artefacts. It is the first such trial of an American museum curator.
Some of the works which the Getty is due to return may be exhibited as evidence in court.
By setting a precedent that could be used by other countries - notably Greece - Italy has set alarm bells ringing around the art world.
A 1970 UNESCO convention, which both Italy and the US have signed, bans the import, export and transfer of cultural property.
