The Europe of milk quotas and qualified majority ­voting will yield to the Europe of inspirational art next week when an exhibition of masterpieces from all 27 European Union member-states opens in Rome.

Stretching from a Maltese statue of the third millennium BC to a 1976 work by Per Kirkeby of Denmark, the exhibition aims to remind Europeans of the cultural values that unite them rather than the political ­disputes that sometimes divide them.