On display are the 4th century BC head of Apollo, as well as finds from the Hellenic and Roman periods, icons painted by Onufri, and the Epitaph of Gllavenica with the Deposition of Christ embroidered in silk, silver and copper
TIRANA, April 29 – After attracting a record 97,000 visitors in Italy’s Rome and Turin where it was displayed for four months, the “Treasures of Albanian Cultural Heritage” exhibition will move to neighbouring Kosovo featuring Albania’s archeological heritage from prehistory to the 17th century. Scheduled to remain open in Prishtina from April 20 to August 21, the exhibition was allowed to travel to Kosovo under a government decision considering their priceless value and importance. On display are the 4th century BC head of Apollo, as well as finds from the Hellenic and Roman periods, icons painted by Onufri, and the Epitaph of Gllavenica with the Deposition of Christ embroidered in silk, silver and copper.
For the first time in Italy, an exhibition of 150 archeological items on loan from Albanian museums were displayed in Rome’s Complesso del Vittoriano museum and Turin’s Palazzo Madama on Albania’s centenary of independence. The exhibit included earthenware, furnishings, objects for daily use, helms and shields, coins, devotional statues and icons, dating from prehistory through the 17th century. In terracotta and ceramic, bronze, copper and iron, marble and wood, the objects documented not only the daily customs of a people but also its cultural and esthetic values, its traditions and its spiritual life. Statues, portraits, coins, gold jewelry, shields, bronze figures of deities, pendants belt, wine jugs, Greek fibulae, spearheads, tombstones, urns that reveal the full Greek-Hellenic influences and Roman are also displayed.
The exhibit is divided into three sections. ”The prehistoric age, from the Neolithic to the Archaic age; Antiquity, which goes from the fifth century to the high Middle Ages, and the Byzantine era,” according to curator Apollon Bace.
Ancient times covering the fifth century BC until the High Middle Ages constitute a historical moment in which the geographical proximity between Italy and Illyria has played a key role in the development of intense commercial and cultural relations between the two shores of the Adriatic.
