Italian Town Sues Culture Ministers Over Chariot in Met

MONTELEONE DI SPOLETO, Italy—The town of Monteleone di Spoleto, Italy, is suing the incumbent Italian culture minister Francesco Rutelli and his predecessors Rocco Buttiglione and Giuliano Urbani to recover a 2,600-year-old Etruscan chariot from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the New York Times reports. The suit contends the ministers did not do enough to secure the return of the chariot, which was discovered in Monteleone in 1902 and sold to the Met the next year. The Met says the statute of limitations has expired because the chariot was bought more than a century ago.