Cetatea dacică de la Căpâlna (com. Săsciori, jud. Alba). După 19 ani… UNESCO

The present paper deals with the problematic of the protection measurements for a UNESCO monument, the Dacian fortress from Căpâlna (Alba District), from a judiciary point of view. The cause of the approach is the recovery of a hoard of golden jewelleries, stolen in 2001 from the Dacian fortress of Căpâlna. After 7 years of illegal trafficking of the artefacts on the black market of antiquities, the Romanian law enforcements recovered the hoard from Germany, with the generous support of an expert from Frankfurt am Main. An important detail is the reconstruction of the ”discovery circumstances” inside the protected area of Căpâlna fortress by the archaeological poachers from Deva (Hunedoara District). The site of the Dacian fortress in Căpâlna was included into the UNESCO list of monuments in 1999, together with 5 other similar fortresses from Hunedoara District. The author describes how he personally saw the archaeological site during the past 12 years, since he has been involved in judicial investigations of the recovery of the gold jewellery stolen from there. Details of the access route, the monument marks, the history of the research, the presentation of the results of the archaeological research, the results of the illegal interventions carried out by the poachers of the archaeological sites are presented. The conclusions of the study are not encouraging, as the way in which the UNESCO monument is presented today is far from what it should be or what national and international laws in the field of protection of cultural heritage mention.