‘Gli Etruschi e il Mediterraneo. La città di Cerveteri’
Palazzo delle esposizioni, Rome
15th April – 20th July 2014
This collection, organised in collaboration with the Louvre-Lens museum in northern France, aims to take a close look at one of history’s most fascinating ancient cultures, the Etruscans.
The exhibition focuses on the town of Cerveteri, a location of major importance during the 1st millennium b.C., a town named Kaisraie by the Etruscans themselves, Agylla by the Greeks and Caere by the Romans, and a central reference point for Italy and the Mediterranean, the truest representation of the greatness of the Etruscan culture.
Cerveteri is situated just 50 km from Rome, and was described by the Greek historian Dionysius of Halicarnassus as “the most prosperous and populated of Etruria’s towns”. As such it has a vast and absorbing history to be explored, and this exhibition attempts to encompass ten centuries of information.
From the initial union of separate communities coming together to build a city, it spans huge lengths of time, analysing the steps the city took towards eventually becoming a major Mediterranean power, only to then be dominated and taken over by a growing Roman empire during the 1st century b.C.
This journey is shown through ancient texts, but also through the many material pieces of history which have been unearthed, over the course of the last two centuries, from the ground of Cerveteri itself.
Among the pieces on display, some on loan from prestigious collections such as the Louvre, the British Museum, the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek in Copenhagen and Berlin’s Antikensammlung, is the world-famous ‘Sarcophagus of the Spouses’, on display somewhere other than the Louvre for the first time ever since making its home there.
Opening hours:
Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday: 10.00 – 20.00
Friday, Saturday: 10.00 – 22.30
Sunday: 10.00 – 20.00
Closed on Mondays
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