Museum of Classical Archaeology
A free gallery of plaster casts of ancient Greek and Roman sculpture, including a painted Peplos Kore.
Plaster copies of ancient statues fill the first-floor gallery of the Classics Faculty on Sidgwick Avenue. The museum dates from 1884, and its collection of casts is among the few of its kind still intact anywhere.
The casts
Hundreds of casts reproduce famous works of antiquity, including the Laocoon group, the Charioteer of Delphi, the Barberini Faun and the Farnese Hercules. Pride of place often goes to the Peplos Kore, a cast of a young woman's statue dedicated on the Athenian Acropolis about 530 BCE. A cast was painted in 1975 as an experiment in recovering the figure's colours, and it is displayed next to a plain white one. Seeing the two side by side challenges the idea that Greek sculpture was always unpainted marble. The museum also looks after pottery sherds and paper squeezes taken from inscriptions.
Where it has lived
The first purpose-built home, designed by Basil Champneys in 1883, was on Little St Mary's Lane. By the 1970s it was too small, and a century-long lease from Peterhouse was ending. A custom-built gallery in the Classics Faculty has housed the collection since 1982, and the earlier building is now Peterhouse's Ward Library.
Practical notes
Entry is free. Doors are open Tuesday to Friday, 10:00 to 17:00, plus Saturdays in term time, 14:00 to 17:00, and the museum is shut on Sundays and Mondays. Exhibitions often set contemporary art or archive material among the casts, with details on the museum's website.
Nearby
Within a few minutes' walk
