Ashmolean Museum

🐚✨ Booking is now open for Aphrodite: The Making of a Goddess.

Step into the world of Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love, beauty, and desire — later worshipped by the Romans as Venus.

Today she is thought of as a symbol of passion and beauty, but her story is far older and more complex.

Discover Aphrodite's remarkable journey from her origins on Cyprus over 3,000 years ago to her transformation into one of the most enduring figures of the ancient Greek and Roman worlds.

This major exhibition opens on 8 October 2026, find out more: ashmolean.org/exhibition/aph…

🏛️ Ashmolean Members go for free with no need to book
🗓️ 8 October 2026 until 11 April 2027
📍 Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

📷️ Crouching Aphrodite or Venus (detail), 100–199 CE, Roman marble after Hellenistic original © Royal Collection Enterprises Limited 2026 | Royal Collection Trust. Photograph: British Museum

📢 We are delighted to announce a new exhibition for 2027 📢

Discover the sensory worlds of the Renaissance.

Uncover a time shaped by global exchange and alive with colour, texture, music, spices, entertainment and fragrance.

Experience works by artists including Raphael, Uccello, Dürer and Antonello da Messina, alongside sculptures, textiles, musical instruments and exquisite objects.

✨️ Renaissance Worlds: Art and the Senses will open on 4 June 2027: ashmolean.org/exhibition/ren…

🏛️ Members go for free.

♟️ The Chess Game (detail), Sofonista Anguissola, 1555, oil on canvas © The Raczyński Foundation at the National Museum in Poznań

⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ @guardian
"Consistently illuminating" @theobserveruk
⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ @thetimes
"Much to savour" @telegraph

Step inside In Bloom and journey from Oxford to the farthest corners of the world and back, uncovering the global stories behind some of Britain’s most beloved blooms.

From the fascinating stories of curiosity and ingenuity of early plant explorers to the networks that shaped global trade, this exhibition reveals how the pursuit of exotic plants transformed landscapes, economies, and cultures, leaving a legacy that still shapes our world today.

🌷Plan your visit via the link in bio.
🏛️ Ashmolean Members enjoy free unlimited entry with no need to book.

📷 Photos by Hannah Pye.

👀 A closer look at the object that inspired today's animation by the talented Eilidh Morley.

This plate shows a sphinx with a lion’s body, a bird’s wings and a woman’s head.

It was made around 600 BCE, over 2,600 years ago. The colour of the clay suggests that it was made on Rhodes.

The plate was made during a time when there was increasing trade between the Aegean and the Eastern Mediterranean, where the sphinx originated. Images of creatures such as the griffin and sphinx travelled westwards, perhaps as decorative designs on carved ivories or metal vessels. These were then adopted locally as pottery designs.

The sphinx became part of Greek mythology, as the monster who terrorised Thebes until Oedipus solved her riddle. Around the time this plate was made, sculptures of sphinxes started to appear on top of columns in Greek sites such as Delphi. Here they acted as guardian figures. The sphinx on this plate does not appear to have a defined role: she is still on her way from east to west.

🪽 Rhodian plate with sphinx design, c. 600 BCE. AN1885.631

We are delighted to share that, together, Oxford University's Gardens, Libraries and Museums welcomed over 3.8 million visitors last year!

Thank you to all of our wonderful visitors, the Ashmolean is currently the 31st most visited attraction in the UK and is now the most popular visitor attraction in Oxfordshire.

ALVA visitor figures: alva.org.uk/details.cfm?p=…