The virtual museum by UNESCO, the United Nations agency for Education and Culture, announced in 2022, is a collaboration with Interpol and currently features 250 initial objects from 56 countries.
In the Portugal gallery, there are six stolen items, including jewels from the Royal Treasure and the painting “Bust of a Roman Woman”, from 1882, by Henrique Pousão.
Among the Portuguese jewels, there is a diamond necklace from 1834 commissioned by Queen Maria II (1819–1853) and a cane handle belonging to King José I (1750–1777), made of gold and encrusted with 387 diamonds of various sizes.
The UNESCO Virtual Museum of Stolen Cultural Objects (https://museum.unesco.org/), designed by architect Francis Kéré from Burkina Faso, who was awarded the Pritzker Prize in 2022, is described as “a unique museum in the world”, “without walls but not without memory”, according to UNESCO’s Assistant Director-General for Culture Ernesto Ottone during the project’s presentation.
Ernesto Ottone emphasized that stolen cultural assets “wound the collective memory”, disrupt the transmission of cultural heritage between generations, and “prevent science from evolving” by concealing knowledge.
This form of theft is one of the most profitable black markets, stems from organized crime, funds terrorism, and thrives especially in war zones, Ottone stated. The virtual museum’s goal is to recover and return stolen objects, but also to raise awareness about this type of crime and its impact on various levels, and to encourage a “more active role in this fight” from everyone, especially young people.
The virtual museum also aims to promote education about cultural goods and “facilitate the intergenerational transmission” of knowledge, he added.
“Learning about these missing objects is the first step to their recovery,” and “when a cultural object is stolen, we lose a part of our identity” are the initial phrases that greet visitors to the UNESCO virtual museum platform.
Ernesto Ottone urged the 60 UNESCO member states that have not officially registered stolen cultural objects to do so, as only pieces already in INTERPOL’s database are included in this virtual museum.
UNESCO’s ambition is for the number of displayed objects to increase immediately, but the hope is that over time, the galleries will empty as items are found and returned to their original countries and owners.
According to Interpol, the 250 objects part of the museum’s inaugural galleries represent just a small fraction of an illicit trade involving at least 57,000 items.
This trade arises from the theft and forgery of artworks, as well as looting in conflict zones or unauthorized archaeological excavations, Interpol noted.
The Virtual Museum of Stolen Cultural Objects by UNESCO was unveiled today, on the first day of the MONDIACULT 2025 conference in Barcelona, Spain.
MONDIACULT 2025 is UNESCO’s World Conference on Cultural Policies and Sustainable Development, held this year for the third time, following editions in Mexico in 1982 and 2022, under the theme “unleashing the power of culture to achieve sustainable development”.
120 ministers from around the world are gathered in Barcelona until Wednesday.
