£260,000 medieval cross found in bin by woman hunting crockery

A cross from the Middle Ages has been found in a rubbish bin in Austria, by a woman looking for old crockery. That was in 2004, in the western town of Zell am See.

She had no idea what she tucked behind her couch at home. Now experts say the cross could be worth £260,000. A local museum has custody of it, temporarily. And whether the woman, who has not been identified, will get any money is not clear.

She found the cross after a hotel-owner who lived in Zell am Zee died, and his apartment was being cleared by relatives. The woman showed the cross to the niece of the dead man, but the she didn't want it and allowed the woman to take it, police said.

Last month, one of the woman's neighbours had an inkling the cross might be special and took it to a museum in the village of Leogang. The curator, Hermann Mayrhofer, alerted police. An investigation revealed that, until the Second World War, the cross had been part of a Polish collection belonging to Izabella Elzbieta of Czartoryski Dzialinska.

She concealed it in a cellar in Warsaw, but the Nazis found it in 1941 and brought it, with other items from Elzbieta's collection, to a castle in Austria. It is unclear what happened next.

Experts at Vienna's fine arts museum said the cross comes from Limoges, France, and dates from 1200. Mr Mayrhofer praised the woman. "She did something extraordinary."

The London-based Commission for Looted Art in Europe is representing the heirs of the former owner of the cross, police said.

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