The Romans: An Empire for the Art

The exhibition The Romans: An Empire for the Art brings, promoted by the Consulate General of Italy and the Italian Institute of Culture in Shanghai, thanks to prestigious loans from the National Archaeological Museum in Naples, carrying the visitor into the artistic and social world that characterised the Roman Empire. 

As one of the first proto forms of globalisation, the birth of the Roman Empire involved a process of contact between peoples distant in traditions and customs, and the consequent need to create a new common language made of images with a strong iconographic and iconological value, that began to decorate every type of support, from frescoes to silverware, spreading through the Mediterranean.

Through wonderful sculptural examples, frescoes and mosaics from the decorations of the buildings of the Vesuvian cities, archaeological finds related to banquets and conviviality, writing instruments and materials for the creation of paintings and mosaics, and advanced forms of technology, the exhibition rediscovers the kaleidoscopic panorama of colours and materials of the Roman world and portrays a society capable of expanding its knowledge beyond the seas.