The Latest Breaking News from British Museum

Current laws prevent British museums from legally giving away items considered national treasures.

There's been a lot of conversation about the return of these artefacts

George Powell and Layton Davies were jailed for more than 18 years after failing to report their find and handing over just three ‘valueless’ coins out of a 1,100-year-old collection from the reign of King Alfred

Analysis of over 1,200 vessels from hunter-gatherer sites revealed that pottery-making methods spread great distances in a short amount of time due to social customs being passed down. Read on for details:

Archaeologists in northern Iraq, working on the Mashki and Adad gate sites in Mosul that were destroyed by Islamic State in 2016, recently uncovered 2,700-year-old Assyrian reliefs. Featuring war scenes and trees, these rock carvings add to the bounty of detailed stone panels excavated from the 1840s onwards, many of…

Germany ‘played a dark role’ in colonialism, the Foreign Minister said

Artefacts looted in 19th century by UK soldiers and sold on, with many more still held by the British Museum

Germany has handed over 20 Benin Bronzes from its museums to Nigeria, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said on Tuesday, making it the latest European country to return cultural artefacts to their African homeland.

Three 2,500-year-old pieces will be ‘donated’ to Greece’s Archbishop Ieronymos II amid wider conversation about future of Parthenon marbles held by Britain

Pope Francis has decided to return to Greece three 2,500-year-old pieces of the Parthenon that have been in the papal collections of the Vatican Museums for more than a century.

Pope Francis has decided to give back to Greece the three fragments of Parthenon marbles that the Vatican Museums have held for centuries