Stupor mundi

A journey through statues, frescoes, necklaces, pottery, masks, bronzes, to «be amazed at how much, behind the apparent diversity, people can be united by the desire to grow, to improve themselves» – 

Objects exist. Rather, they persist. They outlive our existences and carry out their task of providing silent testimony for future memory. They say volumes about the lives of those who created them, as well as those who used them. And though their purposes may change over time, they still speak even if they are broken into pieces. In the thirty objects collected in this book – including a prehistoric board made of bone, an Etruscan necklace, a Byzantine crockery fragment, a Greek mask, and the naval ram of a Roman boat… – Paolo Giulierini, archeologist and director of MANN, recounts the adventurous origins of Italian culture which – already interconnected and global – began before Italy even existed.