Corvey und das Erbe der Antike

Special exhibition at the Diocesan Museum
New promises of valuable loans from all over Europe are arriving in Paderborn every day. Among them is the 2,300-year-old, unique bronze sculpture of a female bear, which Charlemagne may have brought back from Rome and which is now kept in Aachen Cathedral. Fragments of the valuable late antique sarcophagus of Emperor Louis the Pious come from the Musée de la Cour d'Or in Metz. He was the son and successor of Charlemagne and founded Corvey Abbey in 822. The former Benedictine abbey on the Weser was a spiritual, economic, political and cultural center with great charisma and is the starting point for the exhibition in the Diocesan Museum. In the Middle Ages, it was above all the monasteries that preserved the ancient knowledge that still shapes us today.

With numerous fascinating exhibits, the special exhibition brings to life how ancient cultural techniques - especially reading and writing - as well as ideas of politics, law, art and science were passed on at the time: Monks reproduced ancient writings, craftsmen reworked ancient originals or integrated them into their own works. Captured and shaped by the spirit of the times, such treasures tell stories or pose riddles to this day.
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