Swiss perspectives in 10 languages

Switzerland hands over suspected stolen marble sculpture to Libya

Marble sculpture of the head of a young woman
The sculpture is 19 centimetres high and dates from the period between the 1st century BC and the 1st century AD. Federal Office of Culture

The Federal Office of Culture has handed over the marble sculpture of the head of a young woman to the Libyan Embassy in Bern. The restitution took place within the framework of the law on the international transfer of cultural property.

The sculpture is 19 centimetres high and dates from between the 1st century BC and the 1st century AD. The object probably comes from the archaeological site of the ancient city of Cyrene in present-day Libya, the Federal Office of Culture announced on Tuesday.

+ Switzerland returns stolen artefacts to Italy

The cultural artefact was found during a customs inspection in a customs warehouse in Geneva in 2013, it added. The object was confiscated during criminal proceedings in 2016 on suspicion that it had come from a looted excavation.

According to the press release, it is a violation of the Federal Act on the International Transfer of Cultural Property to import stolen or looted cultural property into Switzerland or store it in a customs warehouse.

This news story has been written and carefully fact-checked by an external editorial team. At SWI swissinfo.ch we select the most relevant news for an international audience and use automatic translation tools such as DeepL to translate it into English. Providing you with automatically translated news gives us the time to write more in-depth articles. You can find them here

If you want to know more about how we work, have a look here, and if you have feedback on this news story please write to english@swissinfo.ch.

External Content
Your subscription could not be saved. Please try again.
Almost finished… We need to confirm your email address. To complete the subscription process, please click the link in the email we just sent you.
Daily news

Get the most important news from Switzerland in your inbox.

Daily

The SBC Privacy Policy provides additional information on how your data is processed.

Popular Stories

Most Discussed

News

Mark Thomson to become CERN's new General Manager from 2026

More

CERN selects new director-general

This content was published on The CERN Council has chosen British physicist Mark Thomson as the organisation's next director-general.

Read more: CERN selects new director-general

In compliance with the JTI standards

More: SWI swissinfo.ch certified by the Journalism Trust Initiative

You can find an overview of ongoing debates with our journalists here . Please join us!

If you want to start a conversation about a topic raised in this article or want to report factual errors, email us at english@swissinfo.ch.

SWI swissinfo.ch - a branch of Swiss Broadcasting Corporation SRG SSR

SWI swissinfo.ch - a branch of Swiss Broadcasting Corporation SRG SSR