Agents recover stolen 500-year-old copy of Columbus letter
Source: AP
WILMINGTON, Del. (AP) — Federal agents in Delaware have recovered a more than 500-year-old copy of a letter penned by Christopher Columbus that vanished from an Italian library decades ago.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Delaware and Homeland Security investigators, who specialize in the recovery of stolen rare books and historic artifacts, announced the find on Wednesday. The letter is one of a few dozen authentic, reprinted copies of Columbus’ original letter, which was handwritten in Spanish in April 1493 and almost immediately reprinted in Latin by the Rome printer Stephan Plannck.
It’s the fourth such return in recent years after U.S. investigators, tipped off by a rare books expert, determined that several authentic copies of the Columbus letter had been stolen from libraries across Europe without library officials’ knowledge. Investigators called this latest find — “Columbus Letter Plannck I,” which tells of Columbus’ discoveries in the Americas — the most rare of the four.
The letter, which is valued at up to $1.3 million, was found in the hands of a unidentified private collector and ordered returned to the Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana in Venice, Italy, the U.S. Attorney’s office said. Federal investigators, working with the Italian Carabinieri Command for Protection of Cultural Heritage, determined that the collector was “acting in good faith” in buying the letter from a rare book dealer in the United States in 2003.
Read more: https://apnews.com/4730ebefd35327da7638b26cc50028fb
= new reply since forum marked as read
The library/archive/museum may store it in a climate-controlled room in the basement.
Just one of the treasures from this location:
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Object being "disaquistioned" :
(... after pursuing their man for 500 years 
)
