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Ancient marble bust of Antonia Minor returned to Spain

A Roman bust from circa AD 50, which portrays Antonia Minor (“Antonia the Younger”), was stolen from the Castle-Palace (Castillo-Palacio de los Ribera) in the Andalusian village of Bornos in 2010. Eight years later, a Spanish archaeology professor discovered the stolen bust by chance in an exhibition.

A sandstone-colored female portrait bust with some surface damage stands in front of a light gray brick wall on a light gray pedestal. Antique marble bust of „Antonia Minor“. Source: State Bureau of Criminal Investigation of Bavaria

Further investigations revealed that the bust had been sold in Germany back in 2011. In July 2020, Spain filed with the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media an official return request under Germany's law on the protection of cultural property.

The bust of Antonia Minor, which weighs 25 kilos and measures 45cm by 25cm, was handed over to the Spanish Consul General on 15 October 2020. It thereby returned home to Spain, where it had been excavated in the 1960s. The roughly two thousand-year-old bust represents Antonia the Younger, who as a niece of Augustus Caesar was a member of one of the most influential ruling dynasties of ancient Rome.

A delegation of four men, one of whom is wearing a Greek police uniform, stands around a low wooden table surrounded by a group of sofas, on which a sandstone-colored portrait bust is displayed in a wooden box. German delegation at the Spanish consulate general in Munich. Source: State Bureau of Criminal Investigation of Bavaria