All the charm of Cyprus in an exhibition by the Royal Museums of Turin

The millennial fascination of Cyprus, the heart of the Mediterranean and bridge between East and West, is the protagonist of the international exhibition Cyprus. Crossroads of Civilizations, which runs from Feb. 25 to Aug. 31, 2021, at the Royal Museums of Turin, organized in collaboration with theUniversity of Turin and curated by Luca Bombardieri, professor of Cypriot archaeology at the Turin University, and Elisa Panero, curator of the Royal Museums’ archaeological collections.

The exhibition is meant to be an opportunity to explore the island, the mythical cradle of Aphrodite, a crossroads of trade and a landing place for different cultures where the modern conception of the Mediterranean world is formed. The itinerary is delineated around Italy’s most important Cypriot collection, that of the Royal Museums of Turin, largely unpublished to date, and will be enriched by unique loans for the first time in Italy from distinguished foreign institutions, including the British Museum in London, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, Medelhavsmuseet in Stockholm, the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna and the Cyprus Museum in Nicosia.

The Cyprus collections of the Royal Museums constitute an almost unique nucleus in the panorama of major European museums. In fact, the Museum of Antiquities in Turin has more than 1,000 artifacts, the result of donations that have taken place since 1847 under the consul of the Kingdom of Sardinia Marcello Cerruti and, above all, thanks to excavations conducted by Luigi Palma di Cesnola, an American consul on the island but a native of Turin, and his brother Alessandro. This collection is comparable in scientific importance and variety to the great collection of the Egyptian Museum in Turin, of which it represents an ideal Mediterranean counterbalance. At the same time, the Turin collection constitutes the alter ego of the Cypriot collection set up at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York by Luigi Palma di Cesnola himself, as its first director.

The exhibition is modulated along a path that begins with 19th-century collecting and scholarly research in Turin and Europe, outlining the cultural context that led to the formation of the Museum of Antiquities’ collection. Through seven thematic sections, which allow the archaeological materials to be framed in the history and myth associated with the island, the narrative returns to the Savoy capital with the most recent updates and lines of research in current scientific archaeology. Ample space will also be devoted to collaborations with Turin institutions such as the Egyptian Museum, theAcademy of Sciences, the University Historical Archives, the Museum of Anatomy and the Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography, as well as the Camillo Leone Museum in Vercelli.

For all information you can visit the official website of the Royal Museums of Turin.

All the charm of Cyprus in an exhibition by the Royal Museums of Turin

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