Europe and Asia have had close relations for thousands of years. Commercial and political networks developed both on land - via the Silk Road - and on sea, and trade opened the way for the spread of major religious and philosophical trends. A new exhibition, A Passage to Asia, throws light on 2,500 years of exchanges between Asia and Europe, presenting a selection of over 300 decorative and artistic objects never previously shown in Europe: burial urns, bronze ritual drums, gold jewellery, ivories, old maps, and unique textiles, as well as extraordinary cargo recently recovered from shipwrecks at the bottom of the sea.