Islanders: The Making of the Mediterranean

Bringing together extraordinary antiquities, Islanders: The Making of the Mediterranean takes visitors on a 4,000-year journey from life in the ancient Mediterranean to today.

Many of the more than 200 objects from three of the largest Mediterranean islands, Cyprus, Crete and Sardinia will be seen in the UK for the first time. They help us understand the ways these island cultures reflected, and even shaped the larger Mediterranean world with its migrations and movement of peoples. And they reveal how islanders lived every day, their communities, memories, myths, art and creativity.

Highlights include striking bronze votive figurines made around 4,000 years ago by the Nuragic people of Sardinia; exquisite pottery, jewellery and bronze figures from the palaces, sanctuaries and caves of Minoan Crete; and from the sanctuary of Agia Eirini, a selection of clay-modelled humans, deities, sphinxes and horse-drawn chariots that reveal the complexities of Cypriot society in the 6th and 7th century BCE.