Thematic tours

The Aegean Sea has always played a key role in the lives of the people of the ancient world. It facilitated communication, movement and exchange, while also influencing art, mythology and symbolic thought. The new thematic tour of the Museum of Cycladic Art explores this relationship through objects from its Collections, dating from the 3rd millennium BC to the Hellenistic period.

Raw materials such as obsidian, marble, metal ores and pigments, as well as vessels, figurines and other objects, travelled across the Aegean and beyond. Along with them, people, technologies, ideas and artistic influences also moved. Transport amphorae, coins and weights provide evidence for an extensive network of communication and trade that reached as far as Cyprus and southern Italy.

The sea also had a strong presence in art and myth. Ships, fish, dolphins and other sea creatures appear on objects from different periods, from Early Cycladic frying pans to vessels, fibulae and coins. In everyday life as well as in myth and symbolism, the sea remained a defining element of Aegean life and identity from antiquity to the present day.

The thematic tour Wine: The Gift of Dionysus highlights wine as a timeless symbol of civilization, closely associated with pleasure, social cohesion, and status. The origins of viticulture date back to the Neolithic period (5th millennium BC), while from the Bronze Age onward, the presence of numerous related vessels in the Aegean testifies not only to its systematic consumption, but also provides information about production, circulation, and social organization.

In Classical times, the symposium became established as an institution of sociability, playing a central role in shaping social relationships and hierarchies. At the same time, the production and trade of wine became a means of economic power, while its connection to religious practices and cults made wine an integral element of ritual life, a constant companion to human existence from antiquity to the present day.

The thematic tour Life in the Cyclades 5,000 Years Ago presents Cycladic civilization through a group of objects of remarkable aesthetic quality and technical refinement, dating primarily to the 3rd millennium BC.

Central to the tour are the marble anthropomorphic figurines, mostly female forms—sometimes highly stylized, sometimes more naturalistic, or rendered with idealized proportions—as well as finely crafted marble and clay vessels for everyday and ritual use. Bronze tools and weapons testify to the systematic exploitation of metals and the significant changes in the way of life of island communities during the Early Bronze Age (3200–2000 BC).

Through the creations of the civilization itself, the tour sheds light on the social organization, occupations, natural environment, technical knowledge, as well as the beliefs and cult practices of the inhabitants of the Cyclades.