When Rome Became Greek

Rome’s history is written not only in the marble of its architecture but also in the Greek artworks that shaped it. The exhibition retraces this encounter through more than one hundred originals that reveal how the city’s aesthetic was forged in dialogue with Athens. The journey begins with early exchanges: refined ceramics and votive bronzes crossing the Mediterranean and entering sanctuaries and elite tombs. With Rome’s conquests, that flow becomes overwhelming: statues, reliefs and luxury objects fill temples and public spaces, turning the city into an open-air museum of Greek art. The heart of the exhibition shows how these objects, born for Greek religious settings, acquired new meanings: from offerings to the gods they became symbols of imperial authority or sophisticated ornaments in aristocratic residences. A few masterpieces stand out like magnetic apparitions: the Capitol bronzes, exceptionally reunited, and the Niobid sculptures from the Horti Sallustiani, scattered for centuries and now brought together again. An immersive section evokes their original contexts, restoring the dialogue between sculpture and architecture. The final chapter, dedicated to the age of private collecting, reveals how neo-Attic workshops reinvented Greek models for Roman taste. It is a story of appropriation and metamorphosis: the Greece that Rome conquered - only to be conquered by it in return.