Cyprus is located on a crossroad between three continents: Africa, Europe and the Middle East. It has known many colonisers: Franks, Venetians, Ottomans, British…
RM* comment: The discussion of the looting of the islands’ cultural heritage mostly focusses on the impact of the 1974 Turkish invasion and the ongoing illicit trade in it.
This is too limited.
In her study Consul Luigi Palma di Cesnola 1832-1904 – Life and Deeds (Nicosia,2000), archaeologist and art historian Ana G. Marangou describes how an Italian-American merchant, Luigi Palma di Cesnola, used his time as Consul of the United States of America in Cyprus to acquire and export Cypriot antiquities on a massive scale: 35,573 archaeological objects from all over the island, dating from 300 BCE onward.
He often operated in a very rude manner, and while shipping them to foreign destinations, many got lost.
Later he became the Director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Containing important archive photographs and records, this book `provides a vivid and illuminating background to the Cesnola Collection, now exhibited in all its glory in New York’.
But items looted at that time can be found in the Louvre in Paris, the Hermitage in St. Petersburg, the British Museum and many other institutions.
