On 4 May 2023 in Rome, at the National Roman Museum, the exhibition “The instant and eternity. Between us and the ancients” which, through around 300 exceptional pieces including Greek, Roman, Etruscan and Italic, medieval, modern and contemporary works, explores in unexpected and spectacular ways the complex and varied relationship that we have with the ancients.

For the occasion, after decades, some of the Great Halls of the Baths of Diocletian are reopening to the public, which hosted the Archaeological Exhibition in 1911 as part of the celebrations for the first fiftieth anniversary of the Unification of Italy and which still today preserve part of the historical setting of the fifties.

The exhibition, which can be visited from 4 May to 30 July 2023, is promoted by the Italian Ministry of Culture and the Greek Ministry of Culture and Sport (Eforia delle Antichità delle Cycladi) and bears witness to the centrality and importance of collaboration between the two States. The exhibition event, organized by the General Directorate of Museums and the National Roman Museum in collaboration with Electa, is conceived and curated by Massimo Osanna, Stéphane Verger, Maria Luisa Catoni and Demetrios Athanasoulis, with the support of the Archaeological Park of Pompeii and the participation of the IMT High Studies School Lucca and the Southern High School.

Our relationship with the ancients is essentially twofold: on the one hand, it was built through a long and discontinuous historical process of intellectual and artistic transmission which shaped our classical culture between continuity, fractures and manipulations; on the other, it has sometimes taken the form of a relationship of identification, developed with people who, although they lived a long time ago, have faced, like us, all the vicissitudes of life, from the most joyful to the most dramatic, and have given voices to these and forms that have come down to us. For this reason, the ancients seem to us both distant and close at the same time.