It is a most unusual and diverse exhibition for Unesco, the United Nations group dedicated to preserving and promoting the world's culture. Thirty-one rare artifacts and works of art all of them stolen or illegally exported, mostly in or from Italy went on display at Unesco's Paris headquarters this week in the exhibition, "Recovered Treasures." "All the objects were kidnapped at some point," Iñigo Martinez Möller, the curator of the exhibition, said in an interview. "The point of the exhibition is to show how damaging this illicit traffic can be and how original pieces can be taken apart in violent ways." Two 15th-century panels painted by Bernardino Fungai, for example, were ripped from an altar of the San Secondiano Cathedral in Chiusi with chain saws in 1994. The show seems aimed less at promoting art appreciation than at drawing attention to the investigative work of the Carabinieri, Italy's paramilitary police force, which recovered the works through its cultural heritage protection unit. It also underscores the importance of the cooperation Italy has had from the authorities in other countries, particularly Switzerland, France, the United States, Greece and Ecuador.