Safety · 2026-10-31

Italian police use AI to find stolen paintings at antique fairs

Italian police use an AI system called Swoads to find stolen paintings, statues and coins, and it has already helped recover items worth over 203 million euros.

✨ How it works

During visits to antique fairs, police photograph items that look suspicious and upload the images to an internal database. The AI then looks for matches with stolen objects.

The system was introduced by Lieutenant Colonel Salvatore Rapicavoli of the Italian police unit for protection of cultural heritage. He has an IT engineering background and joined the police in 2013. His team developed an AI algorithm called Swoads. It can compare artworks by color shades and approximate silhouettes.

📌 What has been found

Since November 2023, when the system began operating, it has helped recover more than 300 large paintings and statues and more than 165,000 smaller items: coins, medals, letters, manuscripts, religious objects, stamps and postcards. Their total value exceeds 203 million euros.

Italian police have kept a database of stolen cultural objects since 1969. It now holds over a million items and is considered the largest in the world.

The software also detects fragments of paintings that were cut up and sold separately, as often happens with large altarpieces. For example, in 2026 it helped find Filippo Palizzi's painting "The Shepherdess's Rest", stolen from a gallery in June 1972 and later spotted on an auction house website.

🔹 Why it matters for Ukraine

BBC journalists note that such software could also help search for items stolen during the war, including rare Ukrainian manuscripts and icons.

Sources: 🔗 DOU/dev.ua