Callas: Regarded as one of the finest ever opera singers

More than 2,000 pieces were sold, ranging from paintings and Bibles to coat hangers.

The ministry had said it would burn the underclothes out of respect for the opera diva, but now says they will be hidden from public view.

"We will lock them up and then we will forget where we put them," said Alkistis Soulogianni, director of the culture ministry's international cultural relations.

"When you're dealing with a legend, sentimentality comes into play," Soulogianni told the Assocated Press. "We just couldn't burn the objects. But no one will ever see them, either."

Most of Callas's valuable possessions were sold off by her family and her estranged husband Giovanni Meneghini shortly after she died in her Paris flat, aged 53, in 1977.