Each year, the French Academy in Rome welcomes about 20 artists, writers, and musicians for an artistic residency in the historic Villa Medici, which has housed the academy for over two centuries. Recently, it has also been host to guests of a different, unwanted kind: thieves. On three separate occaisions, intruders have entered under the cover of darkness, stealing several valuable works of ancient and Renaissance statuary from the villa's gardens and vandalizing others.
According to Agence France Presse, the robbers pilfered several sculptures, including a statue of Apollo from the second century B.C., two Roman marble torsos, two Renaissance marble heads, and two modern copies of ancient heads. "You have to be very well-prepared to conduct a risky operation like this, and to take for example two copies of ancient heads made of plaster and concrete," French Academy director Eric Chassey told AFP. "At this stage, we don't have any concrete leads, and we can't exclude anything.... The people who live here are all shocked and traumatized by what happened." The thieves were certainly bold, stealing from a place that is lived in around-the-clock, and even decapitating an ancient statue right outside Chassey's office.
The stolen sculptures were sawed from their pedestals. The Villa has meticulously collected the remaining pieces in hopes of restoring them after their hoped-for future recovery. The Italian art crimes department has begun an investigation with the cooperation of the French art crimes department, the French interior ministry, and the French culture ministry. (French culture minister Frédéric Mitterrand was director of the villa from 2008 to 2009, so, as they say, this one's personal.)
Chassey said that there had been thefts in the past but that he had strengthened security measures after his arrival in 2009. In 2011, the villa had a security budget of €300,000 ($394,000). Now, extra measures have been taken, such as nighttime surveillance using dogs and spotlights, while access to the villa outside regular hours has been limited. Still, the French Academy has expressed that it doesn't want to make the villa an impregnable fortress, as this would compromise its very mission: to be a place of artistic exchange.