Man Returns Dad’s ‘Souvenir of Parthenon’ and Turns Out it Was Even Older Acropolis Relic

In 2022, an elder Chilean man walked into the Greek embassy in Santiago on a mission: to turn himself in.

Not that 77-year-old Enrico Tosti-Croce had done anything wrong, but rather he was putting a small family matter to rest.

In the 1930s, a young Italian submariner visited Athens with the Italian Navy and paid a visit to the legendary Parthenon, a temple built to honor the goddess Athena atop the Acropolis of Athens in the 5th century BCE.

There, he found a small piece of marble statuary decorated with a lotus flower, and with the idea of cultural patrimony still far off beyond the World War he would eventually fight in, Gaetano Tosti-Croce took the piece for himself.

After the war, when he fled/immigrated to Chile, he would show it off to anyone who visited his home, a habit his so