The millennial charm of Cyprus, the heart of the Mediterranean and a bridge between East and West, is the protagonist of the Cyprus international exhibition. Crossroads of civilizations, hosted in the Chiablese Rooms of the Royal Museums of Turin from 29 June 2021 to 9 January 2022, created in collaboration with the University of Turin, with the patronage of the City of Turin and the Piedmont Region and the support of the Foundation CRT, Reale Mutua, Giubileo and Ribes Solutions.

Curated by Luca Bombardieri, professor at the Turin University, and Elisa Panero, curator of the archaeological collections of the Royal Museums, it is a unique opportunity to be conquered by one of the most mysterious Mediterranean islands, whose charm is still unchanged today: mythical cradle of Aphrodite, born from the foam of the Cypriot sea, is the center of the most important sea of antiquity, a crossroads of commercial exchanges and a landing place for different cultures in which the modern conception of the Mediterranean world is formed.

The exhibition is outlined around the most important Italian Cypriot collection, that of the Royal Museums of Turin, to date largely unpublished, and is enriched by unique loans for the first time in Italy from illustrious foreign institutions, including the British Museum in London, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, the Medelhavetmuseet in Stockholm, the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna and the Cyprus Museum in Nicosia.

The Cypriot collections of the Royal Museums of Turin constitute an almost unique nucleus in the panorama of the great European museums. The Museum of Antiquities in fact has more than 1,000 exhibits, the result of donations made since 1847 under the consul of the Kingdom of Sardinia Marcello Cerruti first and above all thanks to the excavations conducted by Luigi Palma di Cesnola, American consul on the island but born in Rivarolo , in the province of Turin. This collection is comparable in scientific importance and variety to the great collection of the Egyptian Museum of Turin, of which it represents an ideal Mediterranean counterpart. The Turin collection - the oldest off the island and probably also the most complete in chronological terms - is at the same time 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 a first director.