For sixteen years, France held artifacts belonging to Syria at the Arab World Institute in Paris, which were owned by the family of former President Bashar al-Assad and confiscated by the French judiciary, according to French channel TF1.

The Élysée Palace announced on Friday that French President Emmanuel Macron ordered the return of the artifacts that had been lent to France before the war to Syrian authorities, during his latest official visit to Damascus.

The French presidency stated that 23 artifacts had been lent to the Arab World Institute in 2010 and could not be returned to Syria in recent years.

Anne-Claire Legendre, head of the Arab World Institute, said: 'The pieces arrived in France for an exhibition just before the outbreak of the revolution in Syria, 15 years ago, and they belong to four Syrian museums.'

She added: 'We obtained a long-term loan from Syrian authorities in 2010. We have kept them ever since, as it was impossible to return them due to the war and insecurity in Syria.'

The French and Syrian presidents view the returned artifacts - sana.sy

The Syrian artifacts were transported to the palace of President Ahmad al-Shara, where he saw them for the first time. They will soon be displayed at the Damascus Museum, which survived the war years and was reopened in 2025, while several archaeological sites were destroyed and thousands of pieces looted from museums and sites.

Rima Khawam, director of the National Museum in Damascus, said: 'We are proud of this cooperation with France. Syrian heritage is a global heritage, so it is our collective responsibility to preserve and protect it for future generations.'

The artifacts returned to the National Museum in Damascus cover a time period from prehistory to the Abbasid era, through Mesopotamian, Canaanite, Nabataean, Palmyrene, Roman, Byzantine, and Umayyad civilizations.

France had severed diplomatic relations with Syria after Bashar al-Assad's crackdown on the popular uprising in 2011, which sparked a war that lasted more than ten years. Emmanuel Macron is the first head of state from a Western power to visit Syria since 2014.