VILLA MEDICI – ROME
October 9, 2025 – January 19, 2026
A journey among religions
How can a place be both sacred and shared? In the popular imagination, a sanctuary is usually associated with a single denomination. Yet, it is not uncommon for believers to transcend dogmatic boundaries and go to pray in a place belonging to another religion, in search of a shared sacred figure.
On the occasion of the 2025 Jubilee in Rome, the French Academy in Rome – Villa Medici presents the exhibition Shared Sacred Places from October 9, 2025 to January 19, 2026. The exhibition brings together significant works from French, Italian, and Vatican collections in dialogue with contemporary creations. From Gentile da Fabriano to Marc Chagall, via Le Corbusier, the exhibition aims to highlight, through works of art, a little-known yet very present religious phenomenon in the Mediterranean: sacred places shared by followers of different religions.
To each his own God, his own scriptures, his own saints. However, since the very beginning, ritual practices, founding stories, tutelary figures, and shared sacred spaces have been intertwined within the three great monotheistic religions—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The exhibition Shared Sacred Places explores specific cases in which different religious practices and communities intersect and coexist. Often hidden in the West, this phenomenon reveals the historical, cultural, spiritual, and artistic interactions that have shaped these religions and the societies of the Mediterranean basin.
Ten years after its debut at the Mucem in Marseille and an international tour, Shared Sacred Places arrives at the Villa Medici in a renewed form, thanks also to exceptional loans from the Vatican Museums, the Louvre, and the Mucem– Museum of European and Western Civilizations Méditerranée, from the MAXXI and from the Jewish Museum of Rome. The exhibition is an invitation to travel through diverse landscapes (cities, seas, gardens, caves, and mountains) that foster the sharing of the sacred. It thus highlights shared connections and heritages, drawing a spiritual geography in which traditions, dialogues, and artistic creations intertwine.
The exhibition Shared Sacred Places It was conceived and produced by the French Academy in Rome – Villa Medici, the Mucem, and the French Embassy to the Holy See in Rome – the Pious French Establishments in Rome and Loreto, based on the original Mucem exhibition. The exhibition benefited from the scientific advice of the Vatican Museums and the Jewish Museum of Rome.
The exhibition is supported by BNL BNP Paribas.
