Police said Wednesday that a marble statue of a woman believed to be more than 2,000 years old was found abandoned in a garbage bag near the Greek city of Thessaloniki.

On the evening of Jan. 18, a 32-year-old Greek man went to the police with an unusual object that he said he had found in a plastic bag among trash bins near the northern city of Thessaloniki. It was a headless, armless statue depicting a female form in a flowing, draped garment.

Ancient statues have also been found in trash before in other parts of Europe. In 2023, a Roman-era statuette of Venus was discovered in a trash dump in Rennes, France. That same year, ancient bronze statues were found in a garbage dump in Tuscany, Italy.

A historic marble statue of a woman has been found discarded in a rubbish bag by a local resident near Thessaloniki, Greece.

On January 18, a man walked into a police station in northern Greece with a black plastic bag he'd just found among garbage bins in the beachside town of Neoi Epivates — and inside was a 2,000-year-old statue that had been inexplicably thrown away.

A more than 2,000-year-old marble statue of a woman has been found discarded in a rubbish bag near Thessaloniki, Greece.A local resident stumbled upon the 31-inch statue next to a bin in Neoi Epivates and promptly alerted authorities.