Italy’s Supreme Court has ruled that the Getty Museum in Los Angeles must return a 2,000-year-old bronze statue it bought for almost $4m in 1977.
The bronze statue was discovered by fishermen off Pesaro, on Italy’s Adriatic coast, in 1964, sold several times, and eventually bought by the American museum over 40 years ago.
But Italy has always maintained that it was smuggled out of the country and acquired illegally, making its first formal request for its return from the US in 1989.