Monteleone chariot

The Monteleone chariot is an Etruscan parade chariot dated to about 530 BC, found in 1902 in a tomb under a mound at Monteleone di Spoleto in Umbria, Italy. Built of wood covered with hammered bronze plates and carved ivory, it stands 131 centimetres high and was designed to be drawn by two horses. Its bronze panels show scenes from the story of Achilles, including his receiving new armour from his mother Thetis. Of about 300 ancient chariots known to survive only six are reasonably complete, and this is the best preserved and most complete of them. It was sold abroad soon after its discovery and has been in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York since 1903. A restoration begun in 1989 found that it had been wrongly reassembled and had once been in a serious accident. Its ownership is contested, and in 2025 the Italian Ministry of Culture backed a request for its return.