Austrian police recovered Benvenuto Cellini's Saliera, the celebrated gold, enamel, ebony, and ivory salt cellar stolen from Vienna's Kunsthistorisches Museum in 2003. The exact recovery date is documented as January 21, 2006: the work was found buried near Zwettl, north of Vienna, after the thief Robert Mang turned himself in following the release of surveillance images. BBC's contemporary report, published the next day, confirms the recovery circumstances, the object's high valuation, and its status as Cellini's only surviving authenticated gold work. The Kunsthistorisches Museum's object record underscores the art-historical stakes: the Saliera is not merely tableware but an allegorical Mannerist cosmos made for Francis I of France, with Neptune and Tellus staging sea and earth.
The recovery returned one of the most important surviving Renaissance goldsmith works to public view in Vienna.
