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“I wanted to have a piece of history that couldn’t be bought,” wrote the woman, who said she was “young and dumb” at the time.
Since returning to Canada, she said, she has suffered two episodes of breast cancer, resulting in a double mastectomy, and her family has also struggled financially.
Pompeii is one of the most famous archaeological sites in the world.
Salvatore Laporta / KONTROLAB / LightRocket / Getty Images
“It seems like we can never get ahead in life,” he wrote, blaming the bad luck on the tiles.
“I took a piece of history captured at a time with so much negative energy,” he wrote. “People died in such a horrible way and I took tokens related to that kind of destruction.”
Nearby Mount Vesuvius erupted in AD 79, bathing Pompeii in hot rock, volcanic ash, and noxious gas and burying its residents.
The woman recounted how she had given another token to a friend and told her of the decision to return her artifacts, but said she does not know if the friend will return hers.
“We are good people and I no longer want to pass this curse on to my family, my children or myself,” she wrote. “Please forgive my careless act that I did years ago.”
Over the years, around 100 visitors have returned small artifacts such as mosaics and pieces of plaster that they stole during a visit to Pompeii, according to a spokeswoman for the park.
The items were sent back along with letters from visitors who “claim to have been unlucky” in taking the artifacts, the spokeswoman told CNN.
A selection of returned letters and artifacts was on display in Pompeii’s Antiquarium, he added, noting that while the artifacts’ value was not significant, the letters were interesting from an anthropological perspective.
Pompeii is one of the most famous historical sites in the world and archaeologists continue to work on the remains.
The building, one of Pompeii’s best-known sites, was closed to visitors in 1980 after being damaged in an earthquake, but has now reopened as part of the Greater Pompeii project, which was launched in 2014 with the aim of safeguarding the city. ancient.
