Letter from Christopher Columbus from 1493 Returned to Italy

The United States returned one of Christopher Columbus's letters dated 1493 regarding the discovery of the New World, which had been stolen from a library in Florence and came into the possession of the Library of Congress in the United States. According to the Associated Press, this eight-page letter, in which Columbus describes his observations of the peoples, plants, and animals of the New Land (America) and was addressed to Isabel and Ferdinand, the King and Queen of Spain, was kept in the Riccardiana Library in Florence. Apparently, this letter had been replaced with a fake version several decades ago, but no one was aware of its theft until a few years ago. The original version was sold in 1990 to a rare book collector in Switzerland and was purchased by another individual at a Christie's auction in New York in 1992. American and Italian officials said on Wednesday, May 18, that the letter was ultimately donated to the Library of Congress in 2004 by the heirs of its last owner. Dario Franceschini, Italy's Minister of Culture, said at a joint press conference with the U.S. Ambassador in Rome: 'After about five hundred years, this letter has taken the same route back and forth that Christopher Columbus took to America.' John Phillips, the U.S. Ambassador to Italy, refused to disclose the name of the last owner who donated the letter to the Library of Congress, adding that investigations are still ongoing. However, American officials stated that the last owner of the letter and the Library of Congress believed that the source of its sale and previous ownership was legitimate. This letter was sold at Christie's auction for 400,000 euros, but the Italian police's art trafficking unit estimates its value to be around one million euros. The director of the Riccardiana Library in Florence stated that the letter was likely stolen in 1950 or 1951 when it was lent to the National Museum of Italy and replaced with a fake version. According to him, this is the only instance of a historical letter from Christopher Columbus being removed from the Riccardiana Library, and given the strict protection of the reading room in this library, its theft from this building was impossible. This document is one of 30 original copies printed from Columbus's original letter and is known as the second Plank copies. The Italian police's art trafficking unit stated that by closely examining the printing method and the different size of the version that existed in the Riccardiana Library, they realized that it was different from the original printing of the letter and, therefore, was fake.