Hundreds of cultural relics to be returned

Nearly 800 Chinese cultural relics that had been taken overseas will soon set off on their journey home.

In President Xi Jinping and Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte's presence, an intergovernmental agreement in Rome on Saturday gave the green light to the return of 796 artifacts to China.

It will be the largest-scale international repatriation of lost Chinese cultural relics from overseas since 1998, when about 3,000 smuggled artifacts were returned from the United Kingdom.