BRITISH MUSEUM, LONDON Raging bulls, Medusas, Madonnas… there are riches and mysteries galore in this enthralling survey of Sicilian history from the ancient Greeks to the Normans Archimedes had his eureka moment in a bath in Syracuse in Sicily. Antipholus, protagonist of Shakespeare’s _The Comedy of Errors_, comes from the very same place. Cicero described Syracuse as the greatest and most beautiful of all Greek cities, when it was not so much an outpost as a grand imperial metropolis. Consider this when you’re passing through this dusty city on the glittering Sicilian shores: it was once as large and powerful as ancient Athens. The truth of this becomes apparent in an enthralling new show at the British Museum. Sicily: Culture and Conquest sweeps aside all the tourist cliches of beaches, lemons, the Mafia and Montalbano to reveal an island occupied by so many different cultures – Greeks and Romans, Muslim Arabs and Africans, the Normans, the Spanish and eventually the mainland Italians – that it is well described as a kind of Mediterranean America. Continue reading...
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