HSI Repatriates Rare 15th Century Columbus Letter to Italy

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Deputy Director Patrick J. Lechleitner has traveled to Rome to repatriate an original edition of a stolen 15th century Columbus letter to Italian officials. Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) had collaborated with international partners and subject matter experts since September 2011 on this multifaceted international investigation.

“It is my pleasure to be here to celebrate the return of this important artifact to its rightful owners, the people of Italy, and I want to commend our HSI Attaché Rome office for their excellent cooperation with our international colleagues, as well as HSI Wilmington for their extraordinary work in identifying, tracking down, recovering and returning the collection of Columbus letters,” said Lechleitner. “This is the fourth original edition of this letter stolen over the past decades and we could not be happier to return it."

In March 1493, explorer Christopher Columbus wrote a letter announcing his discoveries to King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella who had helped finance his New World voyage. The letter was sent to Rome where it was printed in Latin as a pamphlet by Stephan Plannck, a prominent printer of the period, and distributed to libraries across Europe. The printer mistakenly left the queen’s name out of the pamphlet’s introduction (the edition called Plannck I) but quickly realized his error and reprinted the pamphlet, which included the queen’s name (the edition called Plannck II), a few days later.

In September 2011, HSI Wilmington received information pertaining to alleged forgeries of several 15th century, manually printed Latin editions of what are commonly known as the Columbus letter. As a result of the investigation to date, three Plannck II Columbus letters stolen from the National Library of Catalonia in Barcelona, the Riccardiana Library in Florence, and the Vatican Apostolic Library in Vatican City were located by HSI Wilmington, seized and repatriated.

In June 2018, HSI Wilmington and HSI Rome requested that the rare book expert from Princeton University, whom they had worked with since the beginnings of the investigation, compile a full list of all known Columbus letters in Italy. HSI Wilmington was made aware of a copy of a Plannck I Columbus letter, formerly owned by the Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana in Venice, had been reported as missing during a physical inventory conducted in 1988. In September 2018, in coordination with HSI and the Italian Carabinieri, officials traveled to Venice and met with the curator at the Marciana National Library.

Based on the findings of the rare book expert and additional analysis conducted by staff from the Smithsonian Institution’s Museum Conservation Institute, it was determined that the Plannck I Columbus letter stolen from the Marciana National Library was likely the same Columbus letter in the collection of a privately owned library located in the United States. HSI worked with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Delaware to contact the collector, who cooperated with the investigation, to recover the letter.

Since 2007, HSI investigations have led to the repatriation of over 20,000 objects to more than 40 countries and institutions. In 2022, HSI’s program repatriated cultural property to more than 15 countries, including France, India, Iraq, Italy and Mali. Among the repatriated items were cuneiform tablets, religious artifacts and architectural drawings stolen from Jewish communities during the Holocaust.