Winston Churchill portrait returns to Ottawa after international art caper WSOC TV [Video]

OTTAWA, Ontario — (AP) — A stolen portrait of Winston Churchill that was swapped with a forgery during the pandemic has returned to its rightful place, after two Ottawa police detectives traveled to Rome to retrieve it.

Police said “The Roaring Lion” was stolen from the Fairmont Chateau Laurier hotel in Ottawa, sometime between Christmas Day 2021 and Jan. 6, 2022, and replaced with a forgery. The swap was only uncovered months later, in August, when a hotel worker noticed the frame wasn’t hung properly and looked different than the others.

Genevieve Dumas, the hotel’s general manager, unveiled the portrait in a ceremony on Friday.

“I can tell you that it is armed, locked, secured,” Dumas said.

“It’s not moving,” she said, adding that staff accidentally triggered the alarm on Thursday, while they hung it up, “and I’m sure they heard it on Parliament Hill.”

The most famous depiction of Churchill, known as “The Roaring …