Acropolis Museum presents Inspiration: Ancient Greek Art in Italy

To mark its 17th anniversary, the Acropolis Museum presents Inspiration: Ancient Greek Art in Italy, a major new exhibition running from June 16 to August 30, 2026. Conceived as a cultural gift and collaboration between Italy and Greece, the exhibition explores the enduring influence of ancient Greek art on Italian culture and the development of Western civilisation.

The exhibition takes its cue from the famous words of the Roman poet Horace: “Graecia capta ferum victorem cepit” (“Captive Greece captured her fierce conqueror”). Through art, literature, philosophy and education, Greek culture profoundly shaped Roman society, laying the foundations of the Greco-Roman world and, ultimately, much of Western cultural heritage.

This influence began centuries earlier through the interactions between Greeks and the peoples of the Italian Peninsula, including the Etruscans and Latins, as well as through the flourishing Greek colonies of Sicily and Southern Italy. The exhibition traces this long cultural dialogue, revealing how Greek artistic ideals continued to inspire generations of collectors, artists and intellectuals.

At its heart are thirty-eight exceptional masterpieces in ceramic, bronze and marble, works that rarely travel outside Italy. Organised into seven thematic sections, the exhibition follows the journey of Greek artistic influence from antiquity to the modern era.

Visitors will encounter stories of Greek merchants and Etruscan aristocrats, artists working in Magna Graecia, the Mediterranean as a repository of cultural exchange, and the ways in which Romans embraced Greek aesthetics and ways of life. The final sections explore aristocratic collections of antiquities and the lasting impact of classical Greece on modern Italian artists, including Antonio Canova, Alberto Savinio and Giorgio de Chirico.

Admission to the exhibition is free, offering a rare opportunity to experience some of Italy’s most treasured antiquities in Athens and to reflect on the artistic connections that have united Greece and Italy across more than two millennia.

The exhibition is organised into seven thematic sections:

Section I – Before Rome: Greek Merchants and Etruscan-Italian Aristocrats
Section II – Artists in Magna Graecia
Section III – The Sea as Archive
Section IV – The Greece of the Romans
Section V – Living the Greek Way
Section VI – Aristocratic Collections of Antiquities in the Modern Era
Section VII – Italian Perspectives: Canova, Savinio, de Chirico

Concert by the ERT National Symphony Orchestra

On Friday, June 12, 2026, at 9 p.m., the Acropolis Museum will also host a free open-air concert in its courtyard by the ERT National Symphony Orchestra, conducted by internationally acclaimed Spanish composer and conductor Oscar Navarro.

On the same day, the Museum exhibition areas will remain open, as every Friday, from 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. with regular admission, while the second-floor restaurant will stay open until midnight.