AMSTERDAM — The Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam welcomed home two paintings by the Dutch master Tuesday, more than 14 years after they were ripped off the museum’s wall in a nighttime heist.

“They’re back,” said museum director Axel Rueger. He called their return one of the “most special days in the history of our museum.”

The paintings, the 1882 “View of the Sea at Scheveningen,” and 1884-85 work “Congregation leaving the Reformed Church in Nuenen,” were discovered last year by Italian police investigating suspected Italian mobsters for cocaine trafficking.

The two paintings were wrapped in cotton sheets, stuffed in a box and hidden behind a wall in a toilet, said Gen. Gianluigi D’Alfonso of the Italian financial police, who was on hand at the museum to watch the ceremonial unveiling.

They were found in a farmhouse near Naples as Italian police seized about $21.5 million worth of assets, including villas, apartments and even a small airplane. Investigators contend the assets are linked to two Camorra drug kingpins, Mario Cerrone and Raffaele Imperiale.

They are now back on display at the museum before being taken to its conservation studio for repair, although they suffered remarkably little damage as thieves in 2002 ripped them out of their frames and fled.