“Fiat Lux”, from 2018, October 25th to December 9th

Autumn will “light up” another interesting opportunity to enhance and promote the archaeological heritage of the MArRC: the new temporary exhibition “Fiat Lux. The lighting in Antiquity and Middle Ages”, edited by the director Carmelo Malacrino, in the evocative space of Place Paolo Orsi, from Thursday, October 25th to Sunday, December 9th.

Over seventy exceptional exhibits have been carefully selected, cataloged and restored, to tell how our Greek and Roman, Byzantine, Arab and Norman ancestors lived, through their ways and tools to “shed light”.

Many of the objects are presented to the public for the first time and come largely from Reggio Calabria and its territory, where external innovations have always been welcomed and integrated into the local cultural, social and economic tradition.

“Attested in Greece already in the Minoan and Mycenaean world, after several centuries of decline, the use of oil lamps spread again in the Archaic period, with the Athenian productions, already between the end of the seventh and early sixth centuries BC. C., also in the western Mediterranean, from Sicily to Etruria. In Rome and in the Etruscan and Italic world it was only established in the III century a. C.», Malacrino says. “Calabria – the director continues – for its geographical location in the middle of the Mediterranean, has been a crossroads of cultures and trade. The city of Reggio, in particular, located on the banks of the Strait, “gateway to the West” towards the Tyrrhenian Sea of the Etruscans and Romans“. The theme of light works, as a sort of common thread, links historical sources to the archaeological evidence of an urban center with a long life continuity».

As an image-logo of the exhibition, an “erotic” lamp with a grotesque shape, configured as a phallic satyr, from the 3rd century AD, has been chosen. C.. It alludes to the joy of living and the absence of inhibitions and prejudices in the Roman society of the time, but also to the function that these lighting instruments played in enlightening the brothels.