Stolen art 'hung on kitchen wall'

Stolen paintings by Paul Gauguin and Pierre Bonnard hung on an Italian factory worker's kitchen wall for almost 40 years, police have revealed.

The two paintings, now worth at least 10.6m euros (£8.8m), were stolen from a house in London in 1970. They have now been recovered by Italian police, the BBC reports.

After being stolen, they were taken to Italy but were then left on a train.

Unaware of their true value or origin, railway officials sold them to a Fiat worker who hung them in his Turin home.

He put them on the kitchen wall in his home in the city, and took them with him when he retired to Sicily.

The unsuspecting man only grew suspicious about their origins when his son saw a another Gauguin work in a book and noticed similarities with the painting in his father's kitchen.

The man consulted experts and police were eventually alerted.

The Gauguin painting, titled Fruits sur une table ou nature au petit chien (Fruits on a table or still life with a small dog), was painted in 1889 and is thought to be worth between 10m and 30m euros (£8.3m-£24.8m), police said.

The Bonnard, La femme aux deux fauteuils (Woman with two armchairs), is valued at 600,000 euros (£500,000).

Italian officials unveiled the recovered paintings to the media in Rome on Wednesday.