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Author Name: BoingBoing
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License: CC-BY-NC-SA 3.0.[2]
 

Stolen: bronze statue gifted to Cincinnati by Mussolini's Rome

2022-06-20 00:00:00

In 1931, Rome, under control of Benito Mussolini, gifted a statue of the Capitoline Wolf—a scene from the legendary founding of Rome—to the Ohio city of Cincinnati which was named after the Roman statesman Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus. The bronze statue, depicting Romulus and Remus suckling on a wolf, is a replica of the Lupa Capitolina at the Musei Capitolini in Rome and has been located in Cincinnati's Eden Park for almost 100 years. On Friday though, some idiot—or gaggle of idiots—sawed off the statue at the wolf's paws and stole it. From WVXU:

Several years ago, the statue was the center of some controversy in Cincinnati because of its ties to Mussolini. Then-City Council member Chris Seelbach raised the idea of removing the statue from the Twin Lakes area of Eden Park after a 2015 report in the Cincinnati Enquirer.

"Statues from the monster that was Benito Mussolini don't belong in our parks," Seelbach wrote in 2020 tweet responding to the newspaper article. "Museums? Maybe. But not Cincinnati parks." […]

Cincinnati Parks is requesting anyone with information about the theft contact Cincinnati Police.

"The fact of the matter is we have significant pieces of art throughout our (park) system that are there for the public to enjoy, to learn from, to study — and the fact that anybody would attempt to damage or remove a piece of public art that's really there for the general public is appalling," [Cincinnati Parks spokesperson Rocky] Merz concludes. "Whether it be in Eden Park or any of our parks or any parks around the country. It's just unfortunate, and it's unacceptable."
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[2] URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/deed.en_US

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