Stolen Banksy Bataclan artwork discovered in Italy

A piece of art by the renowned street artist Banksy, stolen in Paris last year, has turned up in central Italy, a chief prosecutor said on Wednesday.

Banksy painted the image of a female mourning on an emergency door of the Bataclan concert hall, where 90 people were killed in a terrorist attack in November 2015.

The door was subsequently stolen in January 2019 leading to an investigation held jointly by French and Italian authorities that has led to its recovery, which was announced by the chief prosecutor of l'Aquila, a town in the central Italian region of Abruzzo.

The mural was found in a countryside barn by the Carabinieri police of Alba Adriatica, a coastal town about 100 kilometers northeast of L'Aquila.

The recovered artwork will be presented tomorrow at a press conference at 11 a.m. CET (9 a.m. GMT), a court official said. 

Banksy is a pseudonym for a reclusive British artist whose identity remains a secret and whose works can fetch up to €10 million ($11.3 million). 

The Bataclan concert hall was part of a coordinated Islamic State attack that also targeted cafes and restaurants in eastern Paris, as well as the surroundings of the Stade de France stadium in Saint-Denis. It was France's worst-ever terrorist attack, resulting in 130 fatalities in total.

Read more:  Banksy's chimpanzee parliament up for auction

jsi/msh (dpa, AFP)

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