Italian Police Catch Tourist Stealing Stones From the Ancient City of Pompeii

According to legend, travelers who remove artifacts from the historic Italian city are cursed to endure hardship. Many have even returned the stolen items years later

Christian Thorsberg | Daily Correspondent

August 19, 2025

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Italian officials apprehended a 51-year-old tourist from Scotland who attempted to steal five stones and a brick fragment from the ancient city of Pompeii.

After seeing the man place the items in a backpack, a tour guide notified security, according to a statement from the Archaeological Park of Pompeii. The Carabinieri police were able to stop the man before he could board a train home.

“He said he had no idea it was forbidden to remove artifacts from Pompeii,” says an unnamed officer, per the London Times’ Tom Kington. “He was trying to get out of trouble but it did not work. It is pretty easy to understand you cannot do that because if everyone wandered off with a piece of Pompeii there would be nothing left.”

The items were returned to the ancient streets of the city that were buried by Mount Vesuvius’ eruption in 79 C.E. The man, who said he was taking the items for his son’s collection of rare stones, could face between one and six years of jail time and a maximum fine of up to €1,500 (roughly $1,700).

But his capture may end up being a blessing in disguise. Pompeii’s lore is flush with legends of visitors who return home with artifacts from the preserved city and are subsequently afflicted with hardship, loss and grief.

“We get a lot of pieces sent back with notes about horrible events,” the officer tells the Times. “This week we caught a Scotsman before he could get away, but we may have saved him from the curse.”

In 2020, a woman from Canada made headlines when she returned two mosaic tiles, pieces of amphorae and a piece of ceramic that she had taken from Pompeii some 15 years earlier. In a letter accompanying the stolen items, she blamed the objects for years of misfortune.

“I am now 36 and had breast cancer twice,” the woman wrote, as the Guardian’s Angela Giuffrida reported in 2020. “The last time ending in a double mastectomy. My family and I also had financial problems. We’re good people and I don’t want to pass this curse on to my family or children.”

In 2020, Pompeii archaeologist Luana Toniolo said that the park had received approximately 200 returns within the past decade. “Some letters tell us of sad events that occurred after stealing the artifacts in Pompeii such as broken legs and ankles,” she told Lonely Planet’s James Gabriel Martin. “Others have heard of this ‘curse’ so they prefer to return these artifacts as a precaution, before something bad can happen to them.”

Pompeii now displays returned artifacts with letters from regretful visitors. The exhibition features a letter from a Spanish tourist who had taken a piece of plaster that became, in their words, “a harbinger of family misadventures and misfortunes,” as Wanted in Rome’s Andy Devane reported in 2021.

One of the more harrowing tales belongs to a honeymooning couple from Canada who took a small terracotta statue from the historic city. It was still in the husband’s suitcase when he suffered a heart attack and died.

Writing in 2023 in SEQUITUR, an art and architectural history journal from Boston University, art historian Rowan Murry addressed the curse’s history and the attention it has received.

“The curse of Pompeii further perpetuates this air of mystique offered by dark tourism, and the stewards of Pompeii are using it to their advantage,” Murry wrote. “By displaying returned cursed objects in the Antiquarium and in the media, the custodians of Pompeii are simultaneously creating further interest in the site while protecting it from future damage. The curse brings more visitors to the park, but the threat of magical contagion keeps them in line.”

Christian Thorsberg | Read More

Christian Thorsberg is an environmental writer and photographer from Chicago. His work, which often centers on freshwater issues, climate change and subsistence, has appeared in Circle of Blue, Sierra magazine, Discover magazine and Alaska Sporting Journal.