Europe

A carved elephant ivory panel depicting the Koimesis — the Dormition (falling-asleep) of the Virgin Mary — from the Byzantine tradition, late 10th century. One of the supreme expressions of Byzantine miniature carving.

A well-preserved silver denarius of the Roman moneyer Postumius Albinus, ca. 96 BCE, struck at the height of the late Roman Republic — among the finest examples of Roman numismatic portraiture and reverse iconography.

A moulded earthenware tile with cobalt painting on opaque white glaze, powdered with gold under a transparent glaze — from Andalusia (Muslim Spain) in the second half of the 15th century. A rare survival of Nasrid-period architectural tilework.

A cast copper alloy brooch of the La Tène Celtic tradition, ca. 600 BCE, displaying the fluid curvilinear ornament that characterises Iron Age Celtic art across Europe — a supreme example of pre-Roman European metalwork.

A cast copper alloy round box brooch with selectively applied silver foil from the Viking Age, Norway, 1000–1100 CE — the type of personal ornament worn by Viking women to fasten their layered linen and wool garments.

Rome began as a small city on the Tiber and grew into an empire that ruled the entire Mediterranean world for five centuries, leaving behind a legacy in law, language, architecture, and governance that shapes the modern world.

Fought between 1914 and 1918 across three continents, the First World War killed 20 million people and dismantled four empires, replacing the 19th-century world order with one that no one had wanted or planned.

Between 1941 and 1945, the Nazi regime systematically murdered six million Jewish people alongside millions of Roma, disabled people, and others, in the most documented genocide in human history.

The Berlin Wall, built overnight in August 1961, became the most potent symbol of the Cold War's division of the world. Its fall on 9 November 1989 marked the beginning of the end of the Soviet era.

In the 15th and 16th centuries, Portugal sent its ships further into the unknown than any European nation before, charting the coasts of Africa, reaching India by sea, and opening the age of global commerce.

Flourishing in the city-states of 14th to 17th century Italy, the Renaissance produced Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Galileo, and a transformation in how humanity understood itself and the natural world.

Between 1347 and 1351, the bubonic plague killed between one third and one half of Europe's entire population, destroying the old social order and inadvertently paving the way for a new world.