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. This new exhibition opens on 24 February 2023 at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge.

More than 200 objects from three of the largest Mediterranean islands, Cyprus, Crete and Sardinia will be exhibited in the UK for the first time. These objects will help visitors understand the ways these island cultures reflected, and even shaped the larger Mediterranean world with the 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.

The exhibition, curated by Dr Anastasia Christophilopoulou in partnership with the Embassy of Greece to the United Kingdom and the High Commission of Cyprus in the United Kingdom, is part of the 'Being an Islander: Art and Identity of the Large Mediterranean Islands' project, 2019 - 2023.

The exhibition is organised in partnership with the Ministry of Culture and Sports, Greece; the Department of Antiquities, Ministry of Transport, Communications and Works, Cyprus; and the National Archaeological Museum, Cagliari, Sardinia.

Yannis Andritsopoulos, UK correspondent for Ta Nea reported on the exhibition on the 12th of February with an exclusive interview, and wrote: "from Elytis, who "instilled all his ideas"  according to Byron, in the "blessed islands of Greece", to the pelagic rock that Sikelianos documented, "is covered by the flood", "and as long as life is deep and above it closes it in its unspoiled depths", the islands have always played a leading role in poetry, art, but also in the formation of our culture. This newc exhibition in Britain brings together rare ancient treasures of the Mediterranean, and attempts to highlight the pivotal role of islandism, decoding its "secrets". The exhibitionat the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, will be open from 24 February to 04 June 2023.

"The exhibition, which is the result of a research project we launched in 2019, aims to highlight the elements that define island identities in the Mediterranean. We explored how insularity affected everyday life, art and creation, community building and population movements. At the same time, we created a platform for the study of cultural evolution on the islands," Anastasia Christofilopoulou, curator of the exhibition and lead researcher of the "Being an Islander" programme of Cambridge University, explained to Ta Nea.

Raw materials, utensils, tools, ritual objects and symbols tell the true story of islandism in the depths of the centuries.

"They also reveal how creative, adaptive and inventive the islanders are. The two hundred unique objects "speak" about the, sudden or gradual, intense or imperceptible, changes that contributed to the creation and preservation of the identity of the islanders. On this journey, we invite visitors to discover their own identity," explains Dr Christofilopoulou, who is also curator of the Fitzwilliam Museum's Greek, Roman and Cypriot Collection and teaches Archaeology at Cambridge.

To book, visit: https://tickets.museums.cam.ac.uk/overview/6080

Simon Bertin invites Classics Professor Paul Cartledge to talk on the Parthenon Marbles and talks over returning them to Greece.

During the programme, Paul points that the Parthenon is the most complex, and most architecturally distinguished monument of ancient Greece. He goes on to explain the significance of the stunningly sculpted elements from the frieze, to the metopes and pedimental sculptures.

Paul also takes listeners through the story of Lord Elgin's removal of the best sculptued pieces. How just three decades after they had been removed, and  once Greece gained independence,  the new Greek state formally request the return of what Lord Elgin had removed from the Parthenon and sold to Parliament in 1816. The point on the 'permission' is also covered. "There is no firman", Paul points out but a letter written in Italian, which one can access at the British Museum, and this does not give Lord Elgin's men specific permission to remove all that was removed.

The fragments returned to Greece from Heidelberg, Palermo and most recently the Vatican Museums, although a fraction of what the British Museum holds, have made a great difference to Greece's continued request for the reunification of all of the surviving pieces from the Parthenon.

The support for finding a solution at UNESCO was overwhelming, and Paul praised Greece's efforts, highlighting how isolated the UK has become in this matter.

Paul concludes that the Parthenon and its sculptures are an astnishing feat of human social and political endevour.

 To listen to this programme follow the link, here.