Unique Silver Treasure from Louvre  in Sofia

Sofia, May 22 (BTA) - One of the greatest Roman treasures from
the collection of the Louvre is already in Sofia and will be
accessible from Friday until August 23 at the National
Archaeological Institute with Museum at the Bulgarian Academy of
 Sciences.

This is the first visit of items from the French museum to
Bulgaria in the last 30 years. "Silver from the Louvre. The
Boscoreale Treasure" shows the wealth and the taste of Roman
aristocrats around the beginning of the new millennium, The
Director of the National Archaeologica Instittute, Lyudmil
Vagalinski, told journalists .

The Boscoreale Treasure is the name for a large collection of
luxury Roman objects discovered in the ruins of an ancient villa
 at Boscoreale, near Pompeii, southern Italy. Consisting of over
 a hundred pieces of silverware, as well as gold coins and
jewellery, it is now mostly kept at the Louvre Museum in Paris,
although parts of the hoard can also be found at the British
Museum.

Located northwest of Pompeii, Boscoreale was the location of an
important Roman villa that was destroyed and buried by volcanic
ash following the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD. In 1895,
the remains of a vaulted box containing the treasure was
discovered in the wine-pressing room of the villa, next to the
body of a woman. Most of the Boscoreale Treasure was illicitly
spirited out of Italy and was later purchased by Edmond de
Rothschild, who donated it to the Louvre Museum in 1896.

The treasure consists of 109 pieces of silverware, as well as
gold jewellery (necklaces, bracelets and earrings) and over 1000
 gold coins. Items from the hoard vary in date from 4th Century
BC to 1st Century AD. Many of the silver items from the treasure
 are considered masterpieces of Roman art that could only have
belonged to the very elite sections of society.

The thirty objects exhibited in Sofia include part of the hoard.
 

An exhibition of the Roman villa at Chatalka will open
simultaneously with the one from the Louvre. It presents the
everyday life of affluent Thracian aristocrats on what is today
Bulgarian territory.

The French Exhibition was organized by the National
Archaeological Institute and the Louvre, in cooperation with
Bulgaria's Ministry of Culture, the French Cultural Institute in
 Sofia and the Committee in Support of the Exhibition of
Bulgarian Antiques in the Louvre.