One of the world’s most precious troves of looted antiquities — brilliantly colored burial shrouds from an Andean civilization that flourished a thousand years before Columbus — is on its way back to Peru for a ceremonial handover in Lima.
The 89 embroidered textiles, named for the Paracas peninsula where they were unearthed around 1930 and then smuggled out by the Swedish consul, ended up in possession of the city of Gothenburg and were displayed there in the National Museum of World Culture.
