Massimo Osanna, the archaeological superintendent of Pompeii in Italy, has clearly come up with a brilliant way of getting tourists to return souvenirs stolen from the city destroyed by an eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79AD. Either that, or there really is a curse on artefacts stolen from the famous Roman city - and hopefully all such tourist sites.He recently said he had received up to 100 packages from across the world, bits stolen and returned, sometimes decades later, due to a guilty conscience or because the statues, tiles, fragments of frescoes and pieces of pottery had brought bad luck.The curse of Pompeii goes back to the belief that its destruction was caused by the gods, angry over the sacking of their temples by Roman soldiers.story_article_left1A man in Spain sent a bronze statue that had disappeared in 1987. He said it had brought a "curse on his entire family".An English woman sent back mosaic tiles her parents had taken in the 1970s. She was unhappy about the stolen inheritance she'd received upon her mother's death.Osanna is considering setting up an exhibition of all the letters he has received, calling it "What I brought back from Pompeii".The Curse of Tutankhamun is famous but it can't be true. Highclere Castle in England has a room full of Egyptian artefacts, including items from Tutankhamun's tomb, which were Lord Canarvon's share for funding the expedition to find it. They hardly brought his ancestral home bad luck.Highclere is the setting for the hit TV series Downton Abbey, which must have made a packet for his descendant. But I wonder why they never showed the room...