Ethiopia’s famed Axum obelisk is to be reinstalled at its original site next month, 70 years after the 1,700-year-old treasure was removed by Italian troops, UNESCO said on Thursday.

The UN Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) has overseen a multi-million-dollar operation to restore the obelisk to Axum in northern Ethiopia, where it once stood alongside around 100 other stelae.

Work will finally begin on June 4 to resurrect the 150-tonne stela — returned to Ethiopia in three pieces in 2005 — at Axum, a listed World Heritage Site, with an inauguration planned for September 10.

“This is an operation carried out under the sign of peace,” the head of UNESCO’s world heritage centre Francesco Bandarin told a news conference, insisting on the event’s “major importance for Ethiopia and for Italy.”

Italian soldiers carted away the 24-meter (78-foot), third-century AD granite funeral stela on the orders of then-dictator Benito Mussolini in 1937 during his attempt to colonise Ethiopia.

Despite a 1947 agreement to return the obelisk, it remained in Italy until 2005, standing outside the Rome headquarters of the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation.

“It is a symbol of Ethiopian identity. We say, ‘hawult’, which means this is an eternal monument,” Ethiopia’s ambassador to France Tadelech Haile Michael told reporters.

“Our relations with the Italian government are good, but this operation has allowed us to fill the void that existed between the two countries.”

Axum was the capital of the Axumite kingdom that flourished as a major trading center from the fifth century BC to the 10th century AD.

At its height, the kingdom extended across areas in what are today Ethiopia, Eritrea, Sudan, Somalia, and Yemen.