WASHINGTON , United States (AFP) — A letter penned by Christopher Columbus in 1493 was returned to its rightful resting place in Italy Wednesday, ending a years-long investigation into its theft and forgery.
The Italian explorer wrote the letter to his royal patrons, Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, a year after embarking on his historic journey across the Atlantic.
The precious document played a key role in expanding Europe’s knowledge of the “New World.” Columbus likely drafted the letter while voyaging back to Europe, dating it March 4, 1493, the day he landed in Lisbon.
After Columbus’s return to Andalusia, the letter was reproduced and distributed throughout Spain, Italy, France, Switzerland and the Netherlands. Copies of the letter are now rare, with 11 editions published in 1493, and six more between 1494 and 1497.
The printer Stephan Plannck published two of the first editions in Rome, and one of the letters it printed became the property of the Riccardiana Library in Florence, from where it was stolen on an unknown date and replaced with a fake.
After receiving a tip off alerting it to the fraud in 2010, investigators confirmed that a rare book store in New York had purchased the stolen letter in 1990 from an anonymous seller.
In late 1992, the document sold for $300,000 at auction to a private buyer who donated it to the US Library of Congress in 2004.
A joint Italian-American investigation was launched in 2012, with the aim of repatriating the letter to Italy.
The US Department of Justice confirmed that the letter was formally handed over to Italy on Wednesday during a ceremony at the Angelica Library in Rome.
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