About
The Ure Museum of Greek Archaeology at the University of Reading holds one of the most important university collections of ancient Greek material culture in Britain, comprising approximately 1,600 objects that span the full breadth of Greek ceramic, terracotta, and minor arts from the eighth century BCE to the Roman period. Named in honour of Percy Neville Ure (1879–1950) and his wife Annie Ure, both of whom were distinguished classical scholars at Reading, the museum was formally established following their bequest to the university and has been developed substantially by successive generations of classical archaeologists on the Reading faculty.
The collection's greatest strength lies in its pottery. Greek vases and pottery vessels range from the bold geometric decoration of the archaic period through the black-figure and red-figure ware of Athens' ceramic golden age to the more exuberant polychrome styles of South Italian production in the fourth and third centuries BCE. The Ure collection includes examples of virtually every major pottery-producing centre of the Greek world, allowing students and researchers to trace the development of figural and decorative styles across six centuries of extraordinary artistic achievement.
Beyond pottery, the museum holds a substantial collection of terracotta figurines — small-scale figures of deities, votaries, and genre subjects made for dedication at sanctuaries or placement in graves — that are among the most intimate and revealing products of Greek popular religion and daily life. A collection of ancient Greek and related coins, oil lamps, and small bronze objects completes a picture of material culture that ranges from the sacred to the everyday.
Located on the Whiteknights campus of the University of Reading, the museum operates during university term time and is freely accessible to students, researchers, and members of the public. The campus setting in Reading's attractive Whiteknights Park, with its mature woodland and lake, provides a pleasant environment for a visit that combines classical scholarship with a walk in one of Berkshire's most beautiful academic grounds.
The Ure Museum is recognised as one of the leading teaching collections of classical archaeology in Britain and plays an active role in research, with the entire collection accessible through an extensive online database maintained by the museum and its academic staff.
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Plan Your Visit
⏱️ Recommended Visit Duration
📅 Best Times to Visit
Quietest: Monday, Tuesday, Friday
Busiest: Wednesday, Thursday
💡 Weekday mornings during term time
💡 Visitor Tips
- The museum operates during University of Reading term time only — always check the museum website or call before making a special journey, especially between July and September and over Christmas and Easter.
- The online collection database (available on the museum website) allows you to preview objects before your visit and is an excellent resource in its own right — browse it to identify key pieces you want to see in person.
- The Cole Museum of Zoology is just a few minutes' walk away on the same campus and is also free — combine both visits for a full afternoon of university museum exploration.
- Whiteknights Park surrounding the campus is one of the most attractive university grounds in England — the lake and woodland provide an excellent picnic and walking opportunity before or after your museum visit.
- For students and researchers in classical studies, the museum's study room and reserve collections can be accessed by appointment — contact the museum in advance to arrange object handling and research access.
- The campus is a 30-minute walk from Reading train station, or a short bus or cycle ride. Bus routes 21 and 21A serve the university from central Reading.
- The Ure Museum is compact — plan around 60 minutes for a thorough visit — making it easy to combine with the Museum of English Rural Life (MERL), also free, which is a 25-minute walk or short bus ride away in central Reading.
- Photography is encouraged — the pottery cases offer excellent lighting for close-up photography of vase paintings, and the terracotta figurines are particularly rewarding subjects.
Highlights
Athenian Black-Figure Pottery
Among the jewels of the Ure collection are its examples of Athenian black-figure pottery, produced primarily in the sixth century BCE when Athens dominated the Greek ceramic world. In this technique, figures are painted in black slip on the natural red clay, with details incised through the black surface with a sharp tool to reveal the red beneath.
The museum holds examples of the characteristic vessel shapes — amphorae, lekythoi, and oinochoai — decorated with narrative scenes from Greek mythology, Homeric epic, and athletic competition.
Each pot is a miniature painting, and the Ure examples are selected for the quality and legibility of their figural decoration.
Red-Figure Vase Painting
The invention of the red-figure technique in Athens around 530 BCE reversed the visual conventions of black-figure ware: now the figures were left in the natural red clay while the background was filled with black slip. This allowed painters to render anatomical detail with far greater freedom and to depict three-dimensional space more convincingly.
The Ure Museum's red-figure collection includes examples from the high classical period — the era of the great masters — alongside examples of the mannerist and late classical styles that developed through the fifth and fourth centuries BCE.
Symposium scenes, mythological narratives, and genre subjects are all represented.
Terracotta Figurines
The Ure Museum's collection of terracotta figurines is one of its greatest strengths, numbering several hundred examples spanning the archaic period to the Hellenistic era. Small-scale terracotta figures were among the most ubiquitous products of Greek craft: mass-produced in moulds and finished by hand, they were dedicated at sanctuaries, placed in graves, or kept in the home.
The Ure collection represents the major centres of terracotta production, including Boeotia, Corinth, Attica, and the South Italian workshops at Tarentum and Locri.
Female figures, draped and standing; seated figures; and grotesque and comic types are all represented, offering a window into everyday Greek religious and domestic life.
South Italian Pottery
As Greek colonists established prosperous cities across southern Italy and Sicily in the fifth and fourth centuries BCE, local workshops began producing red-figure pottery in the Athenian tradition but with distinctly Italian character: more elaborate multi-figure compositions, richer use of added colours, and a taste for theatrical and eschatological subjects.
The Ure Museum holds examples from the principal South Italian fabrics — Apulian, Lucanian, Campanian, Paestan, and Sicilian — allowing visitors to trace the regional variations in style and iconography that developed as Greek ceramic art spread across the western Mediterranean.
Collections
The Ure Museum of Greek Archaeology holds approximately 1,600 objects representing the principal categories of ancient Greek material culture from the eighth century BCE to the Roman period. The collection's outstanding strength is its pottery — comprising examples of every major Greek ceramic tradition from Geometric and orientalising ware through Athenian black-figure and red-figure to South Italian and Hellenistic fabrics — which constitutes one of the most representative teaching collections of Greek ceramics in any British university museum.
Supplementing the pottery are collections of terracotta figurines (several hundred examples from major Greek production centres), ancient coins (Greek and Macedonian silver and bronze), oil lamps, small bronzes, and miscellaneous objects of personal adornment.
The entire collection is documented in a comprehensive online database maintained by the Department of Classics.
The Art of Ancient Greece
The main permanent display presents the Ure Museum's collections in approximate chronological order, from geometric pottery of the early Iron Age through the classical period to Hellenistic and South Italian material. The display balances art-historical interpretation — focusing on style, technique, and iconography — with contextual information about Greek religious and social life, illustrating how ceramic objects functioned within Greek society as votive offerings, grave goods, and luxury domestic wares.
📍 Main Gallery
Terracotta Figurines: Religion and Daily Life
A focused display on the terracotta figurine collection explores the role of small-scale terracotta objects in Greek religious practice and domestic life. The display traces the typological development of Greek terracottas from the stiff, hand-modelled archaic figures to the elegant draped standing figures of the fifth century and the naturalistic Hellenistic types associated with the Tanagra tradition.
📍 Figurines Section, Main Gallery
Themes
Time Periods
Current Exhibitions
No current exhibitions. Please check the museum website for updates.