Portait of a Woman (La Belle Ferronniere) by Leonardo da Vinci. [Photo by Wang Kaihao/China Daily]

It also reminds people of the power of belief when the ancient scripts of the torah, the Bible, Buddhist sutras, and Quran pages, are displayed together.

I am not sure whether it is to echo China's initiative revitalizing the ancient Silk Road, but a section of the exhibition has been set aside to review the ancient Asian trade routes connecting China and West Asia through a wide-ranging collection of carpets, ceramics, and sculptures.

As to the abundance of paintings on display, it feels like a physical representation of Western fine art.

From Leonardo da Vinci's Portrait of a Woman (1495-99), Jacques-Louis David's Napoleon Crossing the Alps (1803), Edouard Manet's The Fife Player (1866), and Vincent Van Gogh's Self-Portrait (1887), to Piet Mondrian and Mark Rothko's representative works, the masterpieces just jump from the textbook to appear in front of me.

Unlike many of the world's leading museums, which usually use separate halls for different civilizations, each gallery at the Louvre Abu Dhabi is like a crucible forging elements from various cultures to create a common treasure formed by civilization as a whole.