A LANDMARK agreement with New York’s Metropolitan Museum for the return to Italy of a 6th century BC painted vase and five other stolen treasures has “opened the floodgates” for a return of other looted antiquities, officials said yesterday.

Prosecutors have already served one US gallery with a list of allegedly plundered antiquities which they want returned to Italy. Museums in Japan and Denmark have been told that they too will receive demands for the return of allegedly stolen treasures.

Maurizio Fiorilli, the lawyer negotiating the return of stolen items from the US, said that he had presented the Getty Museum in Los Angeles with a list of 300 artefacts that Italy says it can prove were acquired illegally. He said that Michael Brand, the new head of the museum, was stunned on receipt of the list.

Marion True, former curator of antiquities at the Getty Museum, is on trial in Rome for allegedly acquiring stolen treasures. Prosecutors have demanded the return of 42 items acquired by the Getty during Mrs True’s tenure. But Signor Fiorilli said that Italy wanted at least 300 artefacts back from the Getty, including a 5th century BC statue of Venus and a 4th century BC statue of an athlete.

Italy will also seek the return of antiquities from the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and the Cleveland Museum of Art. The move comes after Rocco Buttiglione, the Culture Minister, and Philippe de Montebello, director of the New York museum, signed an agreement for the return of the Euphronios calyx vase.