β: This is a Beta release of the Fitzwilliam Museum's potential new website.
We want to co-design
our Virtual Museum presence with you.
You can return to our current site at any time.
Following the Government announcement yesterday, museums and galleries in Cambridge will be closed to the public as part of a period of national/local restrictions. So, with great sadness, we will not be able to reopen as planned on 2 January 2021.
This online exhibition explores the most important creation of New Persian literature – the Shahnameh, or the ‘Book of Kings’. The Shahnameh has been defined as the national epic of the Iranian people, their ‘identity card’ (shenas-nameh) and an encyclopaedia of Iranian culture. It celebrates the survival of a civilisation that originated some 7,000 years ago at a dynamic crossroads of cultures, the Iranian Plateau, extended at its peak from Anatolia and the Caucasus across Transoxiana to China, withstood countless invasions, absorbed diverse influences, and conquered its conquerors by virtue of its timeless values.
