Guided tours

The Allard Pierson houses a diverse collection of sculpture. This guided tour shows you plaster replicas and original marble and bronze sculptures from Greek and Roman times. What were the functions of sculpture in Greek and Roman cultures? What do the depictions on display tell us? This interactive tour of our Cast Gallery brings you face to face with the Venus of Milo, sculptures from the Parthenon, and the dramatic Laocoön group, to name only a few.

This tour gives you a bird's eye view of the Mediterranean world across different cultural areas. You will be introduced to masterpieces from our Egyptian, Greek and Etruscan collections, as well as special collections from the Ancient Near East. The central themes are power, mobility, religion, life and death. The objects let you discover clues to the intensive interactions between people from the Near East, Egypt and the Greek city states.

At its peak, the Roman world covered an area running from Scotland to Syria. The great diversity of objects recovered from this area shows that there were many trade and other contacts between different parts of the Roman Empire. To what extent was there a unified ‘Roman’ culture and identity? How did ancient Roman culture live on after the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 AD? We will answer these questions during the tour by taking a close look at the rich collection of antiquities from classical Rome, the Imperial Age, Roman Egypt and, of course, the Low Countries.

During this tour, you will travel to the classical world of ancient Athens and Rome and  explore several highlights of Greek, Roman and Etruscan culture. Original utensils, such as richly decorated Greek pottery and Roman oil lamps, illustrate life in the classical world. A large part of the objects in the collection come from tombs, so they are well preserved.

In our new museum wing we invite you to discover the magnificent objects from the Egyptian antiquities collection, ranging from mummies and sarcophagi to statuettes of gods and hieroglyphic papyri. What was daily life like for the Egyptians? What can we find out about their religion? What significance does ancient Egypt have for later Western culture? This tour focuses on the day-to-day life of the Egyptians and their fascination with life after death.

Guided tours of our temporary exhibitions can be booked using the booking form.