Pompeii artifact discovered in Belgian house decades after it was stolen

A Belgian family looking to sell their home found out a longtime piece of decor they had displayed was a stolen artifact from the Roman ruins of Pompeii.

The De Temmermans recently moved to sell their villa in Herzele, Belgium, but wanted to appraise a marble scene they had brought home from a 1975 trip to Italy, which included a visit to Pompeii.

After deciding to sell their house, son Geert De Temmerman, 53, contacted the Gallo-Roman Museum in Tongeren, Belgium, to investigate if the marble slab was authentic in the hopes of selling it as well.

“I heard them whisper to each other, “It’s authentic!” I asked them if they were interested in buying it, but I was told they weren’t allowed to. … The next day the doorbell rang and the judicial police were there with a search warrant. We didn’t see that coming at all,” Mr. De Temmerman told Belgian daily newspaper Het Laatste Nieuws on Wednesday, as translated from Dutch by Google.

The artifact turned out to be part of a slab from the house of Pompeii resident Lucius Caeciulius Iucundus, depicting an earthquake in the city in A.D. 62. The eruption of Mount Vesuvius destroyed Pompeii in 79. 

It had been stolen on July 14, 1975.

Mr. De Temmerman’s father recounted how he bought the slab on the family’s trip to Pompeii.

“I noticed that we were being followed by a man with a brown burlap bag. … As soon as we left the site, the man spoke to us. He showed us his merchandise and kept repeating ‘money, money’. … I wanted a souvenir from Pompeii and I accepted his proposal. It was clear that the man wanted to get rid of his stones quickly,” the elder De Temmerman told Het Laatste Nieuws.

Experts from the Gallo-Roman Museum are certain the De Temmerman decoration is the same stolen slab.

“A fair amount is known about how the item was stolen at the time. It closely corresponds to the original piece that we recognize from the photos,” the museum’s Bart Demarsin told European TV network Euronews.

A similar piece, also thought to depict the 62 earthquake, is displayed in the Pompeii museum, according to Mr. Demarsin.

The piece will probably be returned to Pompeii, Mr. Demarsin said, but the De Temmermans hope to receive some kind of compensation.

“The judicial police told us we might still be able to get compensation, because after all, the piece hung here for 50 years without anything happening to it. It could so easily have been sold on or broken,” Mr. De Temmerman told Euronews.