Charles recalls Italian cat burglar case on visit to Carabinieri

The Prince of Wales has joked about a daring Italian cat burglar who stole some of his prized jewellery as he watched the country’s military police stage a dramatic raid.

Trainee Carabinieri officers put on a hostage rescue display for Charles when he visited an international policing centre, which trains officers of all ranks from across the globe in everything from UN peace keeping to armed response techniques.

And when he was shown a £1.7 million violin recovered by Carabinieri he told some of the senior officers how his cufflinks had been stolen.

Fabrizio Rossi, who works with a special Carabinieri unit which hunts down stolen artwork, said: “He said some of his jewellery was taken by an Italian thief, but it was recovered.”

Charles was reunited with five sets of cufflinks – including a pair given to him by Camilla – and other precious items in 1998 after they had been taken four years earlier by the burglar dubbed the “Riviera jewel thief”.

The heir to the throne joked with the special Carabinieri team as he left: “I know where to come to (next time).”

In another part of the sprawling centre he watched from a walkway as a Swat team, made up of trainee Carabinieri officers dressed in black and armed with rifles, bludgeoned their way into a house to rescue a hostage.

He also saw their technique for arresting suspects from a car who were handcuffed and taken away before all the officers returned to meet Charles.

Charles and Camilla are on a tour of Europe that has been widely interpreted as a Brexit diplomacy visit, with the heir to the throne strengthening ties with the continent as the UK begins the process of leaving the EU.

At the Centre of Excellence for Stability Police Units, run by the Carabinieri and the US defence department, the prince also met senior military officers from places such as Nepal, Malaysia and Jordan designing a peace-keeping scenario for future military students.

Charles not only spent his day learning about nations collaborating in peacetime but recognised the troops of countries which fought together in the First World War.

He toured a Commonwealth War Graves site in Montecchio Precalcino to pay his respects.

And he ended his day in Vicenza by visiting the tunnel complex area in the nearby mountains created by the Italian military during the First World War.

He used a shepherd’s crook to walk up a steep mountain pass to view the rocky slopes where 52 tunnels were built between February to November 1917 to supply Italian troops at the front.

Tens of thousands of British soldiers had also fought alongside the Italians in the area in the little-known campaign called the “forgotten front”.

He met some Italian Alpine troops along the way but the prince – who apologised to them for running around 20 minutes late – did not complete the trek to the entrance of the caves but returned by helicopter for an evening reception.

The Duchess had spent her day carrying out a series of events in the Naples area, including meeting women whose loved ones had been killed by the mafia.