Colosseum closes exhibition on treasures of Troy

The exhibition “Troy and Rome. Myths, Legends, Stories of the Ancient Mediterranean”, running since June 12, closes tomorrow, October 18, at the Colosseum Archaeological Park. The exhibition brought together over three hundred artifacts from various collections, with a particularly significant core of 220 works on loan from nineteen Turkish museums.

Of these two hundred and twenty works, fifty had never before been seen by the Italian public: a figure that alone signals the scale of the loan arrangement agreed between the institutions involved, and which allowed the Roman public to view materials not usually accessible outside Turkey.

The initiative is part of a bilateral agreement signed in April 2025 between the Italian Minister of Culture and the Turkish Ministry of Culture, a framework of cooperation that made possible the loan of such a large number of artifacts from different museums across the country. This is not an isolated case of museum collaboration, but the result of an institutional agreement designed to foster exchanges of this kind in the future as well, with one of the world’s most visited archaeological parks serving as the venue.

It should be noted that the news currently comes from a single available source in the material consulted, the Ministry of Culture’s press release on the initiative; no further independent accounts are currently available regarding attendance figures recorded during the months the exhibition was open, nor external critical assessments of the layout or of the exhibition itinerary chosen by the curators.

With the closing date set for tomorrow, the exhibition marks the end of a project built around the narrative of the relationship between the myth of Troy and the origins of Rome, a theme that found in the Turkish loans — two hundred and twenty works out of a total of over three hundred artifacts on display — its most significant element from the standpoint of international cooperation between museum institutions. The 2025 agreement remains the reference framework for any future joint initiatives between the two countries in the field of archaeological heritage.