| |
Archaeological Museum of Aigina
The Archaeological Museum of Aigina was the first to be established in Greece. It was founded in 1829 under the supervision of A. Moustoxydi. The present-day building was constructed in 1980 at the archaeological site of Kolona and it is the gift of the Bavarian Collection of the Friends of the Museum of Aigina. It is planned to transfer the collection permanently to the Capodistrian Orphanage of Aigina.
Athens Railway Museum
The Museum was founded in 1979 and belongs to the Greek Railways Organization. Its aim is to preserve samples of the technological development of the means of transportation in Greece. Among the Museum's exhibits are included:
- steam lecomotives dating from 1884
- steam locomotives of mine-trains
- wagons of old trains, royal riages and the smoking car of the train of the sultan Abdul Aziz
- Athenian tramways of the past decades
- hand-and-foot operated draeseners
- models and photographic material
- instruments, printing implements, tickets, uniforms and mechanics' tools of the 19th century.
Benaki Museum
The Benaki Museum was founded in 1930 by Antonis Benakis (1873-1954), member of a pre-eminent Greek family in Alexandria, which made an invaluable contribution to the political, social and cultural life of Greece. Benakis began forming his collections whilst still in Egypt and donated them to the Greek State in 1926, when he settled permanently in Athens. These collections are housed in his paternal home, one of the handsomest Neoclassical buildings in the capital, which was converted into the first private museum in Greece.
The public responded immediately to Antonis Benakis’s initiative and as a result of its exceptional impact the Museum’s treasures quickly proliferated. Thanks to the constantly increasing number of benefactors and donors, the Museum continues to be endowed daily with valuable properties and independent ensembles of artworks which fill in the gaps in individual collections. Concurrently, the acquisition of new exhibits reinforces the research role of the Museum, namely the study of Hellenic as well as other cultures, important pieces from which are kept on its premises.
The rapid growth of the Museum’s holdings and activities necessitated the enlargement of its facilities, the hiving off of certain sections and their re-housing in new annexes; this entailed the overall review of the museological thinking behind the foundation.
The central building re-opened to the public in the summer of 2000 and in it is presented the historical and cultural development of Hellenism. Exhibits span the Neolithic Age to the twentieth century. Many of them are masterpieces of Greek art or are of seminal significance for Greek history: from Antiquity and the Roman era to the Byzantine Age, from the Fall of Constantinople (1453), the period of Frankish rule and the Ottoman Occupation, to the outbreak of the Greek War of Independence (1821), and from the time of the formation of the Modern Greek State until the Asia Minor Catastrophe (1922).
The temporary exhibition gallery hosts exhibitions and diverse other events each year, thus enriching the visitor’s image of Hellenic civilization. The Museum’s educational role is enhanced by the educational programmes for schoolchildren, the first to be organized in a Greek museum. The Museum shop offers high quality replicas of exhibits, while the cafeteria on the Museum terrace has become a very popular venue.
Two new buildings were inaugurated in the summer of 2004. The Museum of Islamic Art – one of the few in the West –, in a Neoclassical building complex in the Kerameikos neighbourhood, hosts one of the most internationally important collections of Islamic art, covering 13 centuries of creativity with many representative works of exquisite quality.
the Cultural Centre at 138 Pireos Street is housed in an industrial building of the 1960s, which has been transformed into a modern museum space designed to accommodate multiple events. The building includes a central atrium, also suitable for holding events, and a 400-seat amphitheatre.
Part of the Benaki Museum’s decentralization programme is the establishment of specialist annexes to house its major archival units, such as the Photographic Archives (15 Filikis Eterias Square), the Historical Archives (S. Delta and 38 E. Benaki Streets, Kifisia, in the house of Penelope Delta) and the Archives of Neohellenic Architecture (138 Peiraios St). Among the Museum’s future plans for expansion are the remodelling of the Nikos Hadjikyriakos-Ghika Art Gallery (3 Kriezotou St) and the organizing of a Museum of Toys and Childhood in the Koulouras Mansion (1 Tritonos St, Paleo Faliro).
Byzantine and Christian Museum
The Byzantine Museum was founded in 1914. From 1930 on it has been housed in the "Ilisia" mansion, which belonged to the Duchess of Placentia and was built in 1848 by the architect Stamatis Kleanthes. It was transformed into a museum by the architect Aristotle Zachos. In recent yars an addition and a large extension with basement and buildings in part above ground have been made. The architectural design is by Manos Perrakis.
The collections of the Byzantine Museum show the course of Greek art from the 4th to the 19th century. They comprise sculptural works, paintings and small works of all sorts. These works represent the artistic production of the Greek area, and other regions both central and peripheral of the Byzantine empire and subsequently of Hellenism on into post-Byzantine times.
The Museum collections include the following:
- Byzantine and post-Byzantine ikons.
- Sculpture
- Manuscripts
- Wall paintings
- Mosaics
- Small objects (cloth, coins, pottery, metal objects, silver)
- Wood carvings
- Patterns (anthibola), bronze engravings, lithographs
- A collection of old prints (incunabula)
- A collection of copies of paintings
Epigraphical Museum
The Epigraphical Museum was founded at its current location in 1885. The architect Patroclos Karantinos refurbished it with new spaces and gave the museum its present form in the 1950's.
Kyriakos Pittakis painstakingly gathered the inscriptions, which formed the first nucleus of the museum's collection, from different parts of Athens. These were supplemented by inscriptions from the collections of the Archaeological Society (Varvakeion) and finds from the Acropolis excavations. New examples from systematic excavations and surface finds, mainly from Attica but also from other parts of Greece, continued to enrich the museum's collection until approximately 1960 when new acquisitions, with the exception of a few donations and joining fragments from other museums (mostly the Ancient Agora), ceased for lack of space.
Vasileios Leonardos undertook the first inventory of the museum's collection at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries. Because this coincided with the publication of the academic series Inscriptiones Graecae, the inscriptions were classified and inventoried by subject matter, and displayed in that order. Markellos Mitsos followed more or less the same principal during the radical renovation of the display following World War II. Mitsos's work was completed by Constantina Delmouzou. The lobby and more recent rooms (9 and 11) were given an instructive and academic character, in accordance with contemporary museological principals, during their refurbishment in the 1990s. In an effort to modernize the permanent collection, the bilingual (Greek-English) labels were replaced by new and more informative texts, and a touch-screen computer, which plays the CD-ROM entitled 'Greek writing', was installed in the lobby in April 2002.
The addition of areas adjacent to the museum will provide the space for the planned re-display of the educational exhibition 'Speaking Stones', which illustrates the birth, formation and evolution of the ancient Greek alphabet, and its use in ancient Greek inscriptions, the mounting of an educational exhibition entitled 'The Birth of Writing', and the creation of temporary exhibition spaces and of a documentation centre (library, impressions archive, video room etc).
Frissiras Museum
The Frissiras Museum was founded in December 2000. It is situated in Plaka, in two fully renovated buildings according to modern museological standards.
In the central building are housed parts of the permanent collection, which comprises more than 3000 paintings and sculptures of the last 50 years, dedicated to the human figure and produced by Greek and other European artists.
In the second building, one-man shows as well as group retrospective exhibitions of contemporary artists are organized almost every two months.
Goulandris Museum of Natural History
Goulandris Museum of Natural History is a public welfare institution, devoted to study, conservation and protection of natural environment. Ever since its foundation it has mapped a pioneer route, a new rapprochement between man and natural environment. It has developed efficient scientific activities for the confrontation and inhibition of environmental threats against the planet and for the rehabilitation of natural resources for the preservation of life. In the meantime, it has formulated a new education of general interest for the re-integration of people into the functions and economy of Nature. With the responsibility of the Greek geography, the Greeks’ educational space, the Institution develops international activity pursuing our historical and cultural tradition and ecumenical consideration of the world. The Museum works for the preservation of our natural environment, by:
Daily teaching hundreds of visitors, mainly children of school age.
Distributing knowledge into society through meetings, conferences, publications and exhibitions.
Developing high-technology workshops focusing on research of the life-giving natural resources: soil, water and air, in relation to nutrition and health.
Cooperating with other scientific centres and institutes in Europe and the USA, in the field of biotechnology, soil ecology and analytical chemistry. Our vision is to be a dynamic constantly active and culture-triggering workshop.
Hellenic Maritime Museum
In 1867, Captain G. Zohios, founder of the Sea Men's Pension Fund (Region of the Navy's Veterans) suggested that the Register undertake the project of collecting and maintaining all objects which related to the Greek naval history and that the foundation be laid for the creation of a Naval Museum.
Unfortunately, the effort by Captain Zohios was not realized at that time and almost 80 years passed until a meeting in 1949, which marked the beginning of the formation of the first Naval Museum of Greece with George Stringos as President of the Board. On 27 June 1955 the inauguration of the first "Hellenic Maritime Museum" took place. It was provisionally housed in a old and small, two-storey building on Akti Moutsopoulou of Zea, Pireaus. The exhibits that were collected up to that time were placed there provisionally.
A short time later in 1964 the Piraeus Port Authority (OLP) and later the National Tourist Organization (EOT) leased at a symbolic rate the plot of land where the museum is now located.
The objectives of the Museum are:
The collection, maintenance, preservation and exhibition of all items of historical significance that were collected from the nation's naval battles as well as from other naval activity of the Greeks from ancient times until today.
The study of our naval history as well as the maintenance and protection of the naval tradition and heritage.
The enhancement of the love for the sea, as a source of national pride to next generations.
About two thousand items are exhibited in the museum today in such a manner that our naval tradition comes to life in a chronological order before the eyes of the visitors.
Jewish Museum of Greece
The Museum was founded in 1977 to collect, preserve, research and exhibit the material evidence of 2,300 years of Jewish life in Greece.
As a historical and ethnographical museum its main interest is to provide a vivid picture of Jewish life and culture as it was during those centuries.
The collection contains more than eight thousand artefacts (some of which are unique) pertaining to the domestic and religious life, as well as the history of the Greek Jews.
The new building of the Museum houses its rich collection and visitor services in an area of 800 m2, organized in permanent exhibition areas with thematic modular exhibits, an art gallery, a periodic exhibition space, a research library, a space for educational programmes, a photo archive and laboratory, a conservation laboratory and a gift shop.
Museum of Cycladic Art
The Museum of Cycladic Art is devoted to the study and promotion of ancient Greek art. It was founded in 1986 in order to house the collection of Cycladic and Ancient Greek art belonging to Nicholas and Dolly Goulandris. Starting in the early Sixties, and with a permit by the Greek State, the couple collected Greek antiquities, with special interest in the prehistoric art from the Cycladic islands.
The Collection was augmented during the Seventies, following the two main directions it had been given in the previous years:
The Cycladic Collection, which was now given a slight preference owing to the scholarly importance of the subject and the ever growing international interest and the Ancient Greek Collection, covering Greek art from the 2nd millennium B.C. to the first centuries A.D., which was also enriched with significant additions.
Between 1979 and 1984, the Nicholas P. Goulandris Collection was exhibited in some of the most important Museums world-wide: the National Gallery of Art in Washington (1979), the Museum of Western Art in Tokyo (1980), the Museum of Fine Arts at Houston (1981), the Royal Museum of History and Art in Brussels (1982), the British Museum in London (1983), and the Grand Palais in Paris (1983).
Already in 1981 Nicholas and Dolly Goulandris had decided that their collection was to be permanently exhibited in Athens, in a Museum open to scholars and the general public. In 1986, the Nicholas P. Goulandris Foundation was created and approved by the Greek State. According to its constituent act, the Foundation's objectives are the study of Aegean civilisation, research into Greek prehistoric and Classical art, and its dissemination and promotion.
The Foundation ensures the protection, display, and expansion of the collection; organises temporary exhibitions on important topics; undertakes the publication of scholarly monographs and catalogues; and participates in research projects world-wide.
Museum of Engravings and Graphic Arts
The course of the Ionian Bank, throughout its 150 years of life, has run parallel to the course of modern Greek engraving.
To celebrate this anniversary, the Bank decided to create a collection of engravings and graphic arts, with the intention of founding a Museum to house this collection, which would cover the lack of such an institution in Greece.
To date, over 3000 works of Greek engravers have been collected, as well as 300 books and other objects related to the field of Graphic Arts. The present administration of the Ionian Bank has already secured a building to house the collection and is proceeding to the foundation of the first Museum of Engravings and Graphic Arts in Greece, which is also the one of the very few in the whole Europe. The Museum is housed in an attractive neoclassical building in Aghias Philotheis Street, near the Cathedral church Athens.
The Museum aims to cover the entire spectrum of modern Greek engraving as well as that of foreign artists who have chosen subjects related to Greece.
Museum of Telecommunications
The Museum of Telecommunications was founded by OTE (Greek Organization of Telecommunications) and was opened to the public in 1990. It is situated in a private building of one thousand square meters and offers spaces for the regular exhibition as well as conference and film projection rooms, a library and a workshop.
The aim of the Museum is the study, research,documentation as well as the collection, maintenance and presentation of the development in telecommunications technology from ancient times until today.
The Museum offers educational programs that are useful to all levels of education. There is an impressive collection of original objects and copies, of telegrams, telecards, as well as photographs and telephotographs, telephone directories, printed documents and various other telecommunications materials.
The Museum of Telecommunications organizes regional exhibitions and participates in European conferences of other telecommunication and postal organizations. It is a member of The International Committee for the Conservation of the Industrial Heritage (T.I.C.C.I.H.-Greek Section).
Museum of the Ancient Agora
The Agora museum is housed in the Stoa of Attalos, a reconstructed building of around 150 B.C. The characteristic feature of the mseum is that the exhibits are all closely connected with the Athenian Democracy, as the Agora was the focus of the city's public life.
The Stoa of Attalos was discovered during the excavations carried out by the Greek Archaeological Society between 1859 and 1902. In 1953-56 it was reconstructed in order to house the finds from the excavations at the Agora. In 1957 the Greek state assumed responsibility for the administration and security of the museum and the archaeological site.
The collections of the museum include:
- Finds from the wells, deposits, burials, workshops and sanctuaries, (4th millenium B.C. - 7th century B.C.)
- Clay, bronze, bone, ivory, and glass objects (6th century B.C. - 3rd century A.D.)
- Sculpture (6th century B.C. - 3rd century A.D.)
- Coins (6th century B.C. - A.D. 1831)
- Pottery (6th century B.C. - 6th century A.D.)
- Inscriptions (5th century B.C. - 2nd century A.D.)
- Items included in public life (5th - 2nd century B.C.)
- Clay lamps (7th century B.C.- 11th century A.D.)
- Objects found in a deep well (10th - 1st century B.C.)
- Pottery of the Byzantine period and the Turkish occupation (10th-12th and 17th centuries B.C.)
- Collection of amphoras (6th century B.C. - Byzantine times)
- Sculptures from the peristyle of the stoa (5th century B.C. - 3rd century A.D.)
- Sculpture and architectural parts of the Upper Stoa.
National Archaeological Museum of Athens
The first national archaeological museum in Greece was established by prime minister of Greece Ioannis Kapodistrias in Aigina in 1829. Since then the archaeological collection has been moved to a number of exhibition places until 1858, when an international architectural competition was announced for the location and the architectural design of the new museum. The current location was proposed and the construction of the museum's building began in 1866 and was completed in 1889 using funds from the Greek Government, the Greek Archaeological Society and the society of Mycenae. Major benefactors were Eleni Tositsa who donated the land for the building of the museum, Demetrios and Nikolaos Vernardakis from Saint Petersburg who donated a large amount for the completion of the museum.
The initial name for the museum was The Central Museum and it was renamed to its current name in 1881 by prime minister of Greece Charilaos Trikoupis During the World War II the museum was closed and the antiquities were sealed in special protective boxes and buried, in order to avoid their destruction. In 1945 exhibits were again displayed under the direction of Christos Karouzos. The south wing of the museum houses the Epigraphic Museum with the richest collection of inscriptions in the world. The inscriptions museum expanded between 1953-1960 with the architectural designs of Patroklos Karantinos.
National Gallery
It was established in 1878 as a small collection of 117 works exhibited at the Athens University. In 1896, Alexandros Soutzos, a jurist and art lover, bequeathed his collection and estate to the Greek Government aspiring to the creation of an art museum. The museum opened in 1900 and the first curator was the famous Greek painter Georgios Jakobides from Munich. After World War II the works began for a new building. After relocating the sculptures in the new National Glyptotheque, there is a discussion to renovate the main building and to build a new wing.The gallery ehibitions are mainly focused on post-Byzantine Greek Art. The gallery owns and exhibits also an extensive collection of European artists. Particularly valuable, is the collection of paintings from the Renaissance.
New Acropolis Museum
The site covered by the museum is filled with ongoing archaeological excavations and contains valuable ruins. The ruins must remain untouched but also be viewable by museum visitors. The task is especially daunting, when considering that Athens is a place of regular earthquakes and new construction is subject to strict structural constraints. Moreover, the artifacts to be exhibited in the new museum are priceless and irreplaceable and will be viewed by tens of thousands of visitors every day. The plan of the museum must follow a chronological sequence that culminates in the famous frieze of the Parthenon Marbles. While direct visual contact with the original site of the Parthenon above should be established, glazing in a hot climate raises technical challenges. Lastly, nearly half of the frieze is currently at the British Museum in London, and its repatriation is currently the object of major political struggles. Installation of the antiquities was due to start in September 2007. The museum will be open for the public in 2008.
At the outset, it was decided to "play down" the building itself and to address the dramatic complexities of the collection and the site with minimalist simplicity. If architecture can be described as the materialization of concepts, the building is about the clarity of an exhibition route expressed through three materials - marble, concrete, and glass. Within the unusual constraints of the site, the building ought to appear effortless and almost undesigned: a base of pilotis above the ruins, a middle section containing the main galleries, and a glass top at the summit containing the Parthenon Frieze. The goal of this orchestrated simplicity is to focus the viewers' emotions and intellect on extraordinary works of art.
Elgin Marbles
Although the return of the Elgin Marbles from the British Museum is not guaranteed, the design includes a rectangular glass gallery that will display the remaining Parthenon Marbles in Athens with the precise geometry and harmonious dimensions of the columned Parthenon, and point up those absent. Visitors to the museum will be able to see the Parthenon from the glass gallery. The orientation of the Parthenon Marbles, which will be exactly as the Parthenon, and their siting is hoped to provide an appropriate context for understanding the accomplishments of the Parthenon complex itself. The visitor's route will form a clear three-dimensional loop, affording an architectural promenade extending from the archaeological excavations to the Parthenon Marbles and back through the Roman period.
Numismatic Museum
The Athens Numismatic Museum is one of the very few of its kind in the world, and the only one in Greece and the Balkans. It has around 600,000 coins, which range chronologically from Greek antiquity through the Roman and Byzantine periods and the Middle Ages in Western Europe into Modern times. The collection also includes ancient coin hoards, excavation records, lead sealings, medallions and precious stones, either donated or bought by the museum itself.
The museum's exhibition is housed at the Iliou Melathron, Heinrich Schliemann's former residence, which was designed by the German architect Ernst Ziller and built in the late nineteenth century. The museum's offices are located in the south wing of the National Archaeological Museum. The permanent display occupies the first floor of the Iliou Melathron, and will soon be extended to the second floor. It was designed so that any additions (cases, conventional and electronic explanatory material) are in harmony with the building's original architecture and decoration. The museum also contains a shop, a room for temporary exhibitions, a large library of about 12,000 volumes and a conservation laboratory.
The museum's main aim is for the public to become acquainted with the world of numismatics. It functions as a Special Regional Service of the Ministry of Culture and is also involved in the publication of books, and the organization of scientific conferences in collaboration with other museums and research centers in Greece and abroad. An important innovation is the creation of a virtual exhibition on the Internet in collaboration with the Department of Coins and Medallions of the British Museum. This exhibition, entitled 'Presveis. A single European currency. Common coinage from Antiquity to the Modern Age', aims to present the evolution of coinage from Antiquity to the present, with an emphasis on the development of common coinage.
The National Historical Museum
The museum houses the collection of the Historical and Ethnological Society of Greece (IEEE), founded in 1882. It is the oldest collection of its kind in Greece, and prior to its transfer in the Old Parliament, was housed in the main building of the National Technical University.
The collection contains historical items concerning the period from the fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans in 1453 to the Second World War, focusing especially in the period of the Greek Revolution and the subsequent establishment of the modern Greek state. Among the items displayed are weapons, personal belongings and memorabilia from historical personalities, historical paintings by Greek and foreign artists, manuscripts, as well as a large collection of traditional costumes from the various regions of Greece. The collection is displayed in the corridors and rooms of the building, while the great central hall of the National Assembly is used for conferences.
War Museum of Athens
The Athens War Museum is from 1975 the museum of the Greek Armed Forces. Its purpose is the exhibition of weapon artifacts and the relevant research in the history of war. It covers all known ages of war activity from antiquity to date. The museums' collections include the collection of the Greek Army with artifacts from other civilizations such as Ancient China and Ancient Japan. The museums centerpieces are weaponry from wars that Greece was involved. |
|
)
)
)
)
