Description
“THE CYPRIOTE ANTIQUITIES CONFISCATED IN 1878 BY
THE BRITISH AUTHORITIES FROM ALESSANDRO PALMA DI CESNOLA
AND STORED IN LATE 19th CENTURY LARNACA, CYPRUS
Background
On 23 October 1878 Major Alessandro Palma di Cesnola (1839-1914)’,
whom Sir Garnet Wolseley (1833 1913), the first High Commissioner of
British-run Cyprus, disparagingly called “most probably, an organ grinder”, was
convicted by the Court of the Medjlis Idaré in Larnaca of conducting illegal
excavations in Cyprus and given a fine of four Turkish liras, which was promptly
remitted by Wolseley.2 Alessandro was let off without a prison sentence but
had all the antiquities once in his possession in Cyprus confiscated. He left the
island, unimpeded and, as far as we know, unencumbered by any of his loot,
in February 1879, never to return³. Alessandro, who described himself in his
correspondence with the British authorities in Cyprus as “Late Vice-Consul at
Papho & Acting Consul in Cyprus for the United States”, none of which was true,
was the younger brother of the more famous or infamous General Luigi Palma di
Cesnola, American Consul in Cyprus between 1865 and 1874 and later Director
of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.”
