The ‘Cambio de Era – Córdoba y el Mediterráneo Cristiano’ (Change of Era – Cordoba and the Christian Mediterranean) exhibition, organised by Ayuntamiento de Córdoba, opens on 16 December in Cordoba and will be on display at Sala Vimcorsa, Centro de Creación Contemporánea de Andalucia C3A and at the Mosque-Cathedral until March 2023.
The exhibition features 200 archaeological objects, which include architectural elements, sarcophagi, tombstones, mosaics, sculpture, jewellery, liturgical objects and paintings from the main Spanish and international institutions, among them the Musei Vaticani (Italy), the Musée National de Carthage (Tunisia), the Museo Nazionale Romano (Italy), the Museu Nacional de Arqueologia (Portugal), the Musée Départemental de l’Arles Antique (France), the Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Firenze (Italy), the Museo Arqueológico Nacional (Spain), the Museo Nacional de Arte Romano (Spain), the Museo Arqueológico y Etnológico de Córdoba (Spain),
the Museu de Mértola, among many others.
The Mértola Museum – Cláudio Torres donated a gold medal with a chrismon, dated from the 4th-7th centuries AD and which is part of the set of materials exhumed from the excavation site at the Achada de S. Sebastião Necropolis, where the St. Sebastian Chapel and Necropolis unit is located.
Regarding the Exhibition, the organisation explains: ‘the birth of Jesus is considered in much of the Western world as the event that ushered in a new era. The impact of Christianity was not only limited to religion or worship, as it also extended to many of the rhythms of life and cultural expressions underlying the formation of Western societies.
But how did that happen? How did the expression of Christianity evolve, from the small initial symbols linked to the funerary world to the great cathedrals and pilgrimage centres of the medieval world? What was the role of Christianity in the political, economic, social and cultural transformations that led to the end of the Roman Empire and the beginning of a new era?
Through iconic works of Mediterranean Christianity, the exhibition, which can be visited at the headquarters of the Centro de Creación Contemporánea de Andalucía (C3A), at Sala Vimcorsa and the Mosque-Cathedral, proposes an innovative overview that ranges from the Christianisation of the Roman Empire to the full development of the new religion in the Mediterranean during the 5th and 6th centuries, coinciding with the consolidation of the barbarian kingdoms and the subsequent intention of Emperor Justinian to restore the territories of the Western Roman Empire”.
