Sculptures condemned by Nazis are found in Berlin

Nearly a dozen sculptures considered by the Nazis to be "degenerate" artwork and believed to have been lost or destroyed after the Second World War have been unearthed during building work near Berlin's city hall.

The terracotta and bronze statues were found during a dig to lay down a new subway line. They belonged to a collection of 15,000 works condemned by Hitler's regime for containing "deviant" sexual elements, anti-nationalistic themes or criticising Nazi ideology. Ten of the pieces will go on display today in Berlin's Neues Museum. One, a terracotta head, is too fragile for display.

Construction workers found the art on the site of an office building that burned down in the summer of 1944. The fire started in the roof, burning the building from the top down and the works that survived the blaze ended up collecting in the basement.