Two fine Ancient Roman artefacts have been recovered as Italy's crackdown on art theft continues.
The Second Century AD works - a marble head of sex and wine god Dionysus and a headless statue of a toga-garbed figure - were traced after decades of detective work, the Carabinieri's Nucleo per La Protezione del Patrimonio Artistico said.
The crack art cops presented the looted artefacts to Rome art chief Gianni Borgna at a ceremony on the Campidoglio.
The delicate little head of Dionysus was stolen from the Villa Torlonia gallery in the 1980s and recently intercepted as it was about to go under the hammer at Christie's in New York.
The toga-clad figure, probably a Roman Senator, was tracked down in Barcelona after disappearing, again in the '80s, from a wall niche on Rome's Colle Oppio hill.
Dionysus will return to the Villa Torlonia while the Senator will be put on show in the Capitoline museums, in the same room as the famed Marcus Aurelius equestrian statue.
Italy is cracking down on art theft with a wave of raids aimed at recovering plunder.
It has also signed landmark agreements with major American galleries to get looted works back, thus discouraging tomb raiders.
An accord with New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art in February dealt a major blow to art trafficking.
Under the accord, Italy recovered a large collection of treasure in return for the promise of loans of equivalent value.
Last week Italian Culture Minister Francesco Rutelli inked an accord with the Boston Museum of Fine Arts - while talks aimed at securing a similar deal with the Los Angeles-based John Paul Getty Museum are going forward.
Italian authorities have also prosecuted a former Getty Museum curator, Marion True, for allegedly receiving stolen artefacts.
The Rome proceedings are the first such trial of a US art official.
