(TAN): A Canadian tourist has returned five artifacts to Pompeii in Italy, which she had stolen from the site way back in 2005, claiming they are “cursed”, reports said.
The woman, who has been identified only as Nicole, sent back “two white mosaic tiles, two pieces of amphora vase and a piece of ceramic wall to the Archaeological Park of Pompeii”, along with a letter explaining the reason for doing it, CNN said.
She wrote in the letter that she was “young and dumb” when she had decided to steal the objects, and that she had “wanted to have a piece of history that couldn’t be bought”.
[ALSO READ: ‘One way’ trans-Tasman travel bubble draws flak from Kiwis]
But, she has since been plagued with misfortune, having suffered “two bouts of breast cancer, resulting in a double mastectomy”. Her family also ran into financial troubles, she shared. “We can’t ever seem to get ahead in life.”
“I took a piece of history captured in a time with so much negative energy attached to it. People died in such a horrible way and I took tiles related to that kind of destruction,” Nicole wrote, referring to the catastrophic Mount Vesuvius eruption in 79 AD that buried the thriving city of Pompeii.
She also told the Archaeological Park of Pompeii that she had given one of the tiles to a friend, and that she does not know if they are interested in returning it.
“We are good people and I don’t want to pass this curse on to my family, my children or myself anymore. Please forgive my careless act that I did years ago,” she wrote, as reported by CNN.
A spokesperson for the park told CNN that over the years, many such visitors have returned small artifacts like mosaic tiles and pieces of plaster that they stole during a visit to Pompeii with similar claims of “bad luck”. A selection of such letters and returned artifacts are even on display at the Pompeii Antiquarium.
