Musei Civici d'Arte Antica

A visit to Salonica of the late 19th and early 20th century, with fine panoramas of walls, churches, mosaics and Byzantine marble decoration. The Museo Civico Medievale of Bologna will be opening the doors on 12th April to an exhibition entitled “Byzantine impressions. Salonica seen through the photographs and drawings of the British School at Athens (1888-1910)”, organised by the Dipartimento di Storia Culture e Civiltà (Department of History, Culture and Civilisation) in collaboration with the University of Thessaloniki, the British School at Athens and the Associazione Culturale Italo Britannica di Bologna (Anglo-Italian Cultural Association of Bologna).

Curated by Isabella Baldini, the exhibition will present photographs and illustrations of Salonica made by two British architects, Robert Weir Schultz and Sidney Howard Barnsley, who visited the city for reasons of study in 1888 and 1890, influenced by the Arts and Crafts movement. At the beginning of the 20th century, their work was continued by two of their students, Walter S. George and William Harvey who, thanks to the collaboration of the Turkish authorities and funding from the Byzantine Research and Publication Fund, were able to make significant contributions to the documentation already gathered: the material forms an important section in the archive of the British School at Athens and is being shown to the Italian public for the first time. The exhibition takes the form of an itinerary past the principal Byzantine monuments of Salonica: the arch of Galerius, the Rotunda, the churches of the Acheiropoietos, St. Demetrius and Hagia Sofia. The photographs area accompanied by a series of rare Byzantine and Ottoman objects from the collections of Museo Civico Medievale di Bologna: ivory works, icons and metal articles.

The exhibition offers a voyage through the city before the fire of 1917 that changed its appearance so deeply, and also provides matter for thought concerning the cultural context that led young British intellectuals of the time to consider Salonica as an important step in their education. Political instability in the Balkans and in Turkey limited the research of the British architects, and things came to a complete halt with the outbreak of the First World War; however, what had been done was not lost. The archive of the British School at Athens documents a growing interest in Byzantine architecture, the progress made in the development of archaeological methods and recording of finds, and embraces the work of three generations of scholars, whose correspondence reveals a constant commitment to preserving the monuments of Salonica, which during those same decades was undergoing profound political and social change.

In a very different context, the Greece of today continues to constitute a point of cultural reference for the young interested in acquiring knowledge and fundamental skills in archaeology and art history. With this awareness in mind, the exhibition recalls the activities of the University of Bologna’s archaeological missions in Crete and Kos; the university is also involved in arranging educational exchanges with Greek universities as part of the Erasmus programme.

The "Byzantine impressions" exhibition is under the patronage of the Ministero degli Affari Esteri (Foreign Ministry), of the Greek Embassy in Italy and of the Scuola Archeologica Italiana di Atene (Italian Archaeological School of Athens).

The main sponsor of the event is UniCredit Banca, with the addition of the collaboration of Mordakhai Tappeti D'Oriente and Immagini e suoni - Bologna.

The video of the exhibition has been produced as part of the didactic activities of the degree courses in Literature and Cultural Assets and of the Master’s course in Archaeology and cultures of the antique world offered by the University of Bologna.