GREEK VASES IN PORTUGAL This side of Heracles' Columns The pottery made in Ancient Greece has been the object of interest and collecting throughout the centuries. Nobody is indifferent to the plastic beauty of these vases that constitute true artworks, in which the monochrome or polychrome painted motives show great variety, from the absolute geometric ones to the representation of daily life elements and mythological scenes, being in this case real discloser ex libris of ancient philosophic-religious thought. Among us, there is a certain sense of emptiness relating to this universe of items, which results greatly from the lack of collecting Greek vases systematically and, in past centuries, there were no Portuguese "archaeological expeditions" in the Central Eastern Mediterranean either. The current exhibition suggests a somewhat different view from the above-mentioned scarcity. After all, there are items of great historic and heritage value in Portuguese museums and official institutions as well as in private collections, although very scattered and unknown to a great extent, if not entirely inedited. For the first time, the most important specimens of Greek vases existing in Portugal, an amount of sixty, have been collected into the same space, revealing all the grandeur of this type of items. Their first visual impact is completed, on display and in catalogue, by the learned but simple comment of Maria Helena da Rocha Pereira, the exhibition's scientific commissioner, together with some of the most credited Portuguese experts for these subjects. Finally, we also refer the presence of the Greek in Portuguese territory, displaying the main findings discovered in archaeological contexts, from the South to the North of the Country.