They came in throngs. On Friday afternoon hundreds of residents from this tiny hilltop town in eastern Sicily excitedly trekked up the steep slope to the town's archaeology museum to celebrate the return to Aidone of a trove that was buried nearby about 2,200 years ago and illegally whisked awayin more recent times. The cache of 16 Hellenistic silver-gilt objects known, as the Morgantina silver was on view this year at the Metropolitan-Museum of Art in New York. For decades archaeologists, magistrates and eventually the Italian government had attempted to convince the museum that the pieces had been illegally excavated 30 years ago from Morgantina, an ancient Greek settlement whose ruins lie next to Aidone. Their perseverance and increasingly incontrovertible evidence paid off, and the silver hoard was included in a 2006 accord between the Italian government and the museum for the return of several objects that Italy said had been looted from Italian soil. The silver was returned in February, but only now has it been restored to Sicily, installed in a freshly whitewashed hall alongside more mundane objects a brass comb, an ancient coin, a large terracotta altar also found in the house where archaeologists believe the silver was buried in 211 B.C. when Morgantina fell to the Romans. "They're beautiful works of art, they tempted a lot of people, but it's right that they've come back to their proper home," said one visitor, Alfredo Scivoli, who opened a bed-and-breakfast here in April in anticipation of the tourists that officials hope will be drawn by the silver. At a packed conference on the return of the treasure earlier in the day Pietro Giovanni Guzzo the former superintendent of Pompeii and the first Italian scholar officially to study the silver at the Met more than two decades ago said most of the collection dated from the third century B.C. and was used for religious purposes and for banquets. He said it probably had been collected for its material value rather than its artistic value. Together the items weigh only about four-and-a-half kilograms, or 10 pounds. Objects used for symposia, as the ancient Greeks called their drinking banquets, include a ladle with a dog's-head handle typical of Morgantina and various drinking bowls. Scholars said that the objects had been hidden in two craters (large bowls for mixing wine) decorated with feet depicting theatrical masks, and that secreting them away probably kept them safe for posterity. "The silver can perhaps shed light on the brutal, dramatic circumstances of the final years of the Second Punic War and, seen within the framework of the house, we get a sense of the art and the material culture of Hellenistic Sicily," said Malcolm Bell III, professor emeritus of art history and archaeology at the University of Virginia and director of excavations at Morgantina. "They have truly been recontextualized, and that is really important?' Mr. Bell was for decades a leading crusader for the return of the treasure, and in Aidone, where his excavations brought seasonal work for many residents, he is very much a hero. "This is a very happy moment and deeply satisfying," he said in an interview. For Aidone the silver's return means much more than righting a wrong. For an economically depressed town that offers few opportunities and has seen droves of young people seek their fortunes elsewhere, the Morgantina treasure presents a bit of hope for the future. Last year the Aidone Archaeological Museum became the permanent home to two archaic acroliths statues usually made with wooden trunks and stone heads and extremities that also had been looted from Morgantina- They had once been owned by Maurice Tempelsman, a New York businessman. The two statues representing the mother-and-daughter goddesses Demeter and Persephone now sit majestically enthroned, draped in tunics created by the Sicilian designer Marella Ferrera. Another boost to the collection will come next year when the J. Paul Getty Museum's villa in Malibu, California, returns a cult statue of a goddess that it bought in 1988 for 18 million. It too was probably looted from Morgantina. The statue which has been identified as Aphrodite, though there is growing debate over whom it personifies will be disassembled for transport and reassembled in its new home. In return Sicily will loan several works to the Getty. "This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity," said the town's mayor, Filippo Gangi. The "extraordinary triptych" of artworks, he said, could "trigger an unprecedented economic development" in Aidone, exploiting too the town's proximity to the Roman Villa del Casale, which boasts more than 3,500 square meters, or 37,600 square feet, of late Roman mosaics and is already one of the most visited sites in Sicily. Not so long ago many locals moonlighted as tomb robbers. Mayor Gangi said it was "a once-tolerated sport," and more than one person at the museum on Friday wondered whether the original thieves, who have never been formally identified, would show up. The new exhibition at the museum includes a 100-lira coin from 1978 found at the so-called House of Eupolemos, the modest abode from which archaeologists believe the silver was stolen. The coin suggests a time frame for the theft. The Met acquired the silver in two installments, in 1981 and 1982, for a total of 2.74 million from Robert Hecht. The antiquities dealer in New York and Paris, now 91, is on trial in Rome on charges of conspiring to deal in looted artifacts. But Silvio Raffiotta, the magistrate who led the legal attack on the Met 20 years ago, admitted that Italy's "negligence and silence" were as much to blame as thieves for the silver ending up in New York. Under the 2006 agreement the Met shares custody of the silver, which will travel between New York and Aidone every four years for exhibit. When the silver came to Italy in February, the Met received a recently excavated 20-piece Roman dining set from the Pompeii region. The Morgantina silver is to return to New York in 2014, but several archaeologists suggested that the fragile artifacts will be put at risk every time they travel. That did not stop the Italian government from showcasing the set at the Shanghai World Expo this year. The museum here is small, said Enrico Caruso, who in September was appointed director of the new Archaeological Park of Morgantina, without space for temporary exhibitions, much less multimedia stations, and roads to the town badly need repairs. But these treasures belong in Aidone, he said: "Here they are not orphans."