Seeing Democracy

Museo Archeologico Lametino · Lamezia Terme, Costa Viola, Calabria

16 June 2026 – 22 November 2026

From 16 June to 22 November 2026, the Lametino Archaeological Museum and the Cloister of the San Domenico Complex in Lamezia Terme will host “Seeing Democracy. The Legacy of Antiquity: From Classical Artefacts to Contemporary Creations”, a temporary exhibition dedicated to the value of civic participation. The exhibition has been organised to mark the 80th anniversary of the Constituent Assembly and forms part of the fifteenth edition of Trame, the festival of books on the mafia, scheduled for 16 to 21 June 2026 and dedicated to the theme ‘Land and Freedom’. During the festival, admission to the exhibition will be free.

Event details

At the heart of the exhibition is the electoral token of Anthropiskos, a citizen of the ancient Magna Graecian polis of Terina. Discovered in 2016 at Iardini di Renda, in Sant’Eufemia Vetere, this small bronze sphere was used in the process of drawing lots for public office. A tiny artefact, yet one of great symbolic power, which illustrates just how ancient the idea of participation in community life is. From the museum’s galleries, the exhibition extends to the Cloister of San Domenico with ‘Alfabeto Civico’, a site-specific installation curated by Massimo Sirelli. The work translates the themes of democracy, citizenship and memory into a contemporary, immediate and pop visual language, transforming the cloister into a space for reflection bridging the ancient and the present. The exhibition forges a dialogue between Magna Graecia, the democratic choices of the twentieth century and today’s active citizenship. Archaeology and contemporary art become tools for examining our own times, evoking values such as freedom, equality, the rule of law and the protection of rights.

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