The exhibition “The ancient civilizations of Basilicata. Treasures emerging to light” attempts to highlight and make known to the wider public the culture of the peoples who inhabited the hinterland of southern Italy from the 11th to the 6th century BC. The focus is on the land of Oenotria, today’s Basilicata in the Gulf of Taranto.

The exhibits housed in the Acropolis Museum’s Temporary Exhibitions area remain “unseen” by the public as they are kept in the warehouses of the National Museums of Matera.

The exhibition narrates and makes evident the complex interactions between the Greek tribes that settled on the coast and the local populations that inhabited the extensive hinterland, in a general context of great dynamism, with intense movements of people, manifested in hospitality relations, gift exchanges, herd movements and trade.

Vases, tableware, luxury artefacts, works of local craftsmen influenced by the different Greek traditions, primarily Cycladic, Corinthian, Attica, Eastern Greece, decompose to give birth to new, “international” products, just as the society that inhabits these places of interconnection, as these areas of the Ionian coast have been defined, where Greeks and natives have found together a new modus vivendi. As the Director of the Acropolis Museum, Mr. Stambolidis, stressed, the exhibition captures the mobility, interaction and coexistence of the peoples of the Mediterranean in a world that is “pulsating”.

The exhibition is part of the programme “Il racconto della bellezza” and has been touring for more than a year in Italian Cultural Institutes around the world. The presentation of the exhibition at the Acropolis Museum is the result of a constant and constructive collaboration between Italian and Greek cultural institutions.

The Acropolis Museum

“The Ancient Civilizations of Basilicata. Treasures emerging to light”

Hall of the Periodical Exhibitions

8 October 2024 – 26 January 2025

Curated by: Massimo Osanna and Annamaria Mauro