An icon of classical beauty, the Apollo Belvedere of the Vatican Museums, will once again be visible to the public after five-year-long restoration work, according to ANSA.

The statue portraying the god Apollo having just shot an arrow with his bow was restored to re-establish its solidity, using among other things a carbon and steel bar inserted in its base said Guy Devreux, the head of the Vatican Museums' Stone Materials Restoration Laboratory.

Plaster fragments dating back to the 5th and 4th century BC found among the ruins of the imperial palace of Baia north of Naples were also used to rebuild a hand of the statue, replacing one created during restoration work carried out in the 16th century by Giovannangelo Montorsoli after the statue was discovered in Rome in 1489.

The restoration of the statue - which was made by a copyist workshop that was active in Rome in the first decades of the 2nd century A., replicating a bronze masterpiece made in Greece around 330 B.C.