Enrico Tosti-Croce spent decades telling visitors to his Chilean home about the marble fragment sitting on his shelf that came from the famous Parthenon in Greece. The 77 year old engineer inherited the carved stone from his father Gaetano, an Italian submarine engineer who picked it up near the base of the Parthenon during a 1930 visit with the Italian Navy. For years, the two and a half pound piece of engraved marble depicting part of a lotus flower was simply another ornament in the family dining room, moving with them from Italy to Viña del Mar, Chile after World War II.
When Tosti-Croce heard news reports about Greece fighting to reclaim marble sculptures from the Acropolis, he knew returning his father’s treasure was the right thing to do. He contacted the Greek Embassy in Santiago last January, sent photos and details, then personally delivered the marble fragment in late March. Months later, he received stunning news from archaeologists: the piece wasn’t from the Parthenon at all, but from an even older temple called the Hekatompedon, built around 570 BCE during Greece’s Archaic period. The fragment was likely part of a decorative gutter from the Acropolis’ oldest monumental temple, making it approximately 2,600 years old and even more historically significant than anyone imagined. Tosti-Croce told reporters that returning the artifact gave him a special kind of satisfaction he couldn’t even describe, adding that he felt like he had done something truly good.
