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Wine Across Cultures: From Ritual to Revelry
Wine Across Cultures: From Ritual to Revelry
Ancient Greek symposiums, Egyptian banquets, Chinese ritual ceremonies, Persian poetry, and Venetian glassware—how wine shaped civilization across continents and centuries. From the sacred to the sensual, discover how different cultures transformed a simple fermented beverage into an art form.
60 minutes
13 stops
This tour begins in the Greek and Roman galleries on Floor 1, exploring the symposium culture and drinking vessels of ancient Greece and Rome. We then move to the Egyptian galleries to see wine in funerary and celebratory contexts, continue to the Asian galleries on Floor 2 to examine Chinese ritual wine bronzes, visit the Islamic galleries to explore wine in Persian poetry and courtly life, and conclude with European decorative arts showcasing the evolution of wine vessels from medieval times through the 18th century.
Galleries: 155 → 154 → 157 → 164 → 171 → 170 → 121 → 135 → 207 → 455 → 462 → 549 → 547