European culture

European culture refers broadly to the traditions, arts, philosophies, and social practices originating in or characteristic of Europe.

The term encompasses classical antiquity, Christianity, the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and their modern descendants—though what counts as distinctively European is contested.

The museum's collection celebrates European culture from ancient Greece to the present.

The phrase sometimes carries political freight, invoked to assert shared heritage or, more contentiously, to exclude non-European influences.