Athens has asked Switzerland to return a 480BC silver coin sold in a Zurich auction for €80,000.

The silver drachma, showing a soldier and a horse on one face and bearing a royal seal on the other, was put on sale and the Greek police were alerted by an anonymous letter in September 2009, the daily newspaper Ta Nea said.

Greece and Italy have stepped up a drive to retrieve smuggled antiques from overseas and foreign museums.

Sign up to our free newsletters

Get the best updates straight to your inbox:
Please select at least one mailing list.

You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the link in the footer of our emails. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform. By subscribing, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing.