A 300 year old 500-page manuscript by Nostradamus was stolen from a library in Rome, back in 2007. It was rediscovered last year when it was put up for sale by a German auction house. Over the years, the book floated around to various flea markets in Paris and then the German city of Karlsruhe before an art dealer tried to sell it through an auction house in Pforzheim, Baden-Württemberg, at a starting price of €12,000.
How did the library get a hold of the book? It was primarily due to Italy’s cultural heritage protection team, that was established in 1969 and has retrieved more than 3 million stolen artefacts. A special team came across the book on the auction house’s website and identified it as originating from the library in Rome via a stamp dated 1991 on one of the pages. Rome’s public prosecutor contacted his counterpart in Pforzheim, who began an investigation. German experts established the book was an original work of Nostradamus, who was famous for his cryptic prediction of world events, and was the one trafficked from Rome.
Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.