oa Early-Modern Coins Under Threat in Sicily. An Italian Prisoner Prosecuted by the Allied Government and the Presumed ‘Palermo AMGOT Hoard 1943’

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Giuseppe Marra, an Italian soldier, was captured by the Allies in Sicily during Operation Husky (July 1943) and subsequently prosecuted by a court of the Allied Military Government of the Occupied Territories (AMGOT) for looting twenty-four seventeenth-century silver coins belonging to Philip III, Alof De Wignacourt, and Philip IV. The present study, which is closely linked to my recent ERC project ‘SICILYWAR’, examines novel records to report on the event and presents all numismatic data provided by the relevant documents. The findings demonstrate that Marra was in unlawful possession of a hoard of coins. The records enabled me to assess the role of military and local authorities in seizing the coins and delivering them to the Regional Archaeological Museum ‘Antonino Salinas’ in Palermo, as well as the military context, and the conduct of the soldier who plundered the coins.