A tourist discovered a funerary urn containing human ashes on the beach at Marina di Chieuti on the Adriatic coast of southern Italy on Sunday morning, prompting an investigation into how the remains arrived there.
The urn held the ashes of an approximately 80-year-old Italian man who had lived in Germany, where he was cremated. A stamp on the urn traced it to a German crematorium. The holidaymaker reported the find at a beach bar some 400 metres away, whose operator contacted Mayor Diego Iacono, who then alerted the Carabinieri.
Police seized the urn and are examining two possible scenarios: a sea burial in the Adriatic or illegal dumping on the beach. Investigators are working to reconstruct how the urn reached the Pugliese coastline.