A bronze statue of the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius, held by the Cleveland Museum of Art (USA), is to be returned to Turkey after years of scholarly and legal inquiry

A bronze statue of the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius, held by the Cleveland Museum of Art (USA), is to be returned to Turkey after years of scholarly and legal inquiry. The statue, dated to the 2nd–3rd centuries AD, was illegally removed from the ancient city of Bubon in the 1960s. Turkey has sought its return for more than 65 years.

Since 2021, the Turkish Ministry of Culture and Tourism, together with the Manhattan District Attorney's Office and Homeland Security Investigations, has secured the return of many artefacts from Bubon, including the statues of Lucius Verus, Septimius Severus and Caracalla.

Archival documents, scholarly research and eyewitness testimony confirmed the provenance of the statue of Marcus Aurelius. In 2023 the Cleveland museum contested the decision to confiscate it, but the evidence presented by Turkey refuted its arguments. In May 2024 experts carried out further studies, which confirmed that the statue had been removed from Bubon.

After that the museum agreed to return the statue. The Turkish Minister of Culture and Tourism, Mehmet Nuri Ersoy, called the event an important step in the struggle to recover cultural heritage.

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