Byzantine gold returns to Nicosia

The icons arrived without ceremony, in crates, under guard. For decades they had travelled the auction rooms of three continents; now they hang again a few kilometres from where they were made. The gold has not dimmed.

The exhibition is careful not to be triumphant. It is, instead, a meditation on loss and return, on what a small island keeps and what it lets go. The crowds have been silent, which is its own kind of applause.