Italian police on Friday (September 30) showed off two Vincent Van Gogh paintings worth millions of euros, which were stolen from an Amsterdam museum 14 years ago.
Police found the priceless works in a country house belonging to an alleged Italian drug smuggler during an anti-mafia operation in Naples.
Investigators said each artwork was worth an estimated 50 million euros ($55.85 million).
The Naples prosecutor said on Friday that the paintings were found "a few days ago", and that Italian and Dutch experts were called in to authenticate them.
The recovered works, "Congregation Leaving the Reformed Church in Nuenen" (1884/5) and "View of the Sea at Scheveningen" (1882), are both from relatively early in Van Gogh's short, tempestuous career.
The paintings were found wrapped in cloth inside a safe in a country house south of Naples that belonged to Raffaele Imperiale, a 41-year-old businessman accused in January of running an international cocaine trafficking ring together with high-ranking mobsters.
Imperiale is a fugitive and Italian investigators suspect he is living and running a construction business in Dubai. The arrests of 11 others in January led investigators to the paintings.
