Hundreds of cultural relics to be returned

Soon after, the administration contacted its Italian counterpart to start a long process of exploring the possibility of securing their return through judicial channels. An Italian court made the final ruling on their repatriation this year.

Wu Min, of the administration's museum management department, said work would start immediately on arranging the details of how to transport the relics back to China.

The complete list of the 796 relics has yet to be released, but Wu said they "are of abundant variety and generally high value".

She also said that they were relatively well-preserved and cover a wide spectrum of Chinese history ranging from 5,000 years ago to the early 20th century.

According to the administration, among the relics is a pottery jar from today's Gansu province that can be dated to the Majiayao culture, a Neolithic culture from the third millennium BC. In addition, there are pottery figurines from the Han (206 BC to AD 220), Tang (618-907) and Ming (1368-1644) dynasties and a porcelain bowl from the Song Dynasty (960-1279) from Fujian province.