OREANDA-NEWS. The main art museum of Paris — the Louvre — returned stolen items of Italian Renaissance armor, reports «BBC News». The ornate helmet and breastplate were identified by an expert on military antiquities in Bordeaux, who was asked to evaluate the collection of a local family. Police are investigating how the family inherited the items. The armor was stolen on May 31, 1983. The circumstances of this larceny are still unknown.

The police found the objects in the database of missing artifacts in France, which has more than 100,000 objects. The ceremonial helmet and breastplate were made between 1560 and 1580 in Milan, this armor was donated to the museum in 1922 by the Rothschild family.

The most visited museum in the world often faced with the larceny of art objects. The theft of the most famous exhibit, the Mona Lisa, caused an international sensation when the painting was stolen in 1911. Louvre Museum employee Vincenzo Perugia hid in a closet for the night to pick up a masterpiece by Leonardo da Vinci. It was recovered two years later when a thief tried to sell the painting to an antique dealer in Florence.

In 1976, three robbers climbed scaffolding, smashed a display case, and stole a diamond-encrusted sword used for the coronation of King Charles X in 1824. The last larceny from the Louvre was a small painting in 1998 by the French artist Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, «The Road to Sevres».