Fifty years ago, in June 1968, archaeologist Mario Napoli uncovered a beautifully painted tomb in a small necropolis just south of Paestum, the ancient Greek colony Poseidonia in southern Italy. It is known as the Tomb of the Diver thanks to the unique depiction on its plaster and limestone lid of a solitary young man, […]
Museum
Travel: Berlin’s Museum Island
Richard Hodges traces different journeys in the 8th century AD Berlin seems an unlikely place to discuss the 8th century AD in Europe. Yet a galaxy of scholars has been drawn to the stolid Bode Museum on Museum Island in the heart of the German capital to do just this. Today, the city boasts renowned […]
Sir Joseph Hotung Gallery of China and South Asia
After two years of refurbishment, the British Museum has reopened its longest gallery, devoted to China and South Asia. Artefacts are back on display in the listed mahogany cases, offering a chronological journey through the rich collections from Neolithic pottery to Ravi Shankar’s sitar. A vast Ming dynasty mural (c.1424- 1468) from a Buddhist temple […]
Review: Museum of Ligurian Archaeology
Stretching down from France between the sea and the mountains, the Italian region of Liguria is home to a wide variety of historic sites. At one villa, in Pegli on the outskirts of Genoa, the recently renovated Museum of Ligurian Archaeology explores ancient activity in the area, from the first inhabitants to the Romans. A […]
National Museum Zurich
The Swiss past with a modern twist. Follow the flow of the rivers Sihl and Limmat into downtown Zurich, and you will arrive at a scenic fork in the water. Here is the home of the country’s newest cultural attraction: Archaeology in Switzerland, the first permanent exhibition to take up residence in the recently opened […]
Turin’s Egyptian Museum
Nadia Durrani and Andrew Selkirk visit Turin’s transformed Museo Egizio. When Turin’s Egyptian Museum (Museo Egizio) was opened in 1824, the hieroglyphic codecracker Jean-François Champollion declared that now ‘The path to Memphis and Thebes passes through Turin’. Yet, by the turn of the current millennium, few visited: its displays and facilities were outdated and cramped, […]
Sicilian splendours
Sicily, one of the world’s great crossroads of culture, is the subject of the British Museum’s latest must-see exhibition, Sicily: Culture and Conquest. Curators Dirk Booms and Peter Higgs take us behind the scenes, telling the story using five of their favourite objects from the displays. Sicily sits in the centre of the Mediterranean, its […]
Germanicia Mosaics
Aysegul Gurgezoglu Tuzun visits Kahramanmaraş Archaeological Museum in Turkey Germanicia, beneath the modern city of Kahramanmaraş in southern Turkey, played host to many civilisations during a long and illustrious lifetime that stretches back to the Stone Age. Hittites, Urartians, Assyrians, Persians, Macedonians, and Seleucan kings have all ruled here, each conquering and renaming this important city, […]
Bogotá’s Gold Rush
Modern Colombia boasts a treasure trove of ancient sites, including the mountain city of Ciudad Perdida (see CWA 53), the megalithic sculptures at San Agustín, and the burial chambers of Tierradentro. The country’s star attraction, though, is Bogotá’s Museo del Oro – often cited as one of South America’s greatest museums, and home to more […]
Museum: Smithsonian Institute
Ceramics of the Ancestors Central America’s ancient past at the Smithsonian Institution By 1500 BC, the inhabitants of Central America had settled in large villages. This more sedentary lifestyle and the development of maize farming that came with it allowed rapid population growth, and the evolution of complex and sophisticated forms of organisation, religion, and art. […]
Life and Death in Pompeii and Herculaneum: Ordinary people in extraordinary times
What was life like in Roman Empire? The new exhibition at the British Museum will give visitors a unique opportunity to find out. Curator Paul Roberts explains his ambitious project to recreate a typical 1st century AD house and garden, bringing a slice of Pompeii and Herculaneum to London.
Ice Age art at the British Museum
Perhaps one of the most exquisite works of art in the world today is that created by a man or woman about 13,000 years ago. Skilfully carved from the tip of a mammoth tusk, it depicts two reindeer swimming one behind the other and is naturalistic, detailed, and charmingly tender. It was found at Montastruc, […]
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