guide iLoveGreek Museums Summer 2022 Your free copy
Athens Piraeus
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An archaeologist restores a bronze statue at the National Archaeological Museum of Athens.
THE COUNTRY’S OLDEST MUSEUM is considered to be one of the most important in the entire world. Its collection includes some of the most famous and popular works of Ancient Greek Art. This fact, in a way, overshadows another great truth: there is not a single exhibit in its collection that is not admirable, charming and impressive. This is no exaggeration: the museum’s permanently exhibited collection has been set up after a very rigorous screening, from a huge number of important finds that emerged during at least two centuries of excavations across the country. For this reason it is a pity that visitors only observe the highlights of the Museum and pass by what, at first glance, seems not famous
16 Summer 2022 iLoveGreekMuseums 01 National Archaeological Museum
Theenough.museum is hosted in a really beautiful building. It was designed by Ludvig Lange, professor of architecture at the Munich Academy and creator of the Leipzig Museum. However, due to political unrest and empty state coffers, the museum was built much later and after Lange’s design was modified by Ernst Ziller. The foundation stone was laid in 1866 and it took another 23 years until its construction was Small-scale “modernizing redevelopments” of a museological nature in its permanent collection never ceased. Nevertheless, its spaces have never ceased to exude a more “romantic” idea of what a museum is, which would be considered somewhat more characteristic of the 19th century. At the same time, the density with which the exhibits are presented, which makes a famous one stand just a few centimeters next to a “completely unknown” one, creates a sense of “democratic equality” among them, still moving in our times, because it proves that the museum does not cultivate an over-aesthetic illusion, but wants to give full account of the reality of the times to which it refers and were very important, because they were the great root from which the whole of Western Civilization Bronze statue of a young athlete, found in the sea off Marathon, Attica. ca. 340-330 BC.
Photo: Paris Tavitian
17 LiFO Attica National Archaeological Museum 44 Patision Str. (the street is officially named “October 28 Str.”), Athens 106 82 / www.namuseum.gr / Opening Hours: (until October 31) Tuesday: 13:00-20:00, Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday: 08:00-20:00 / Tickets: General admission (until 31/10): €12 The “Jockey” of Artemision (detail), Hellenistic period, ca. 140 BC.
A visitor in a hurry, who would not have the time to carefully study the more than 11.000 exhibits, should at least not consider leaving the museum without having seen up close: the golden burial mask of “Agamemnon” of Mycenae, the two musicians of Keros, the flying fish of the fresco from Phylakopi in Milos, all the Santorini frescoes, the Kouros of Sounio, Zeus (or Poseidon – still unclear) of Artemisio, the Grave Stele of Hegeso, the “jockey” of Artemisio, the teenager of Antikythera, the Antikythera mechanism and the marble group of Aphrodite, Pan and Eros, depicting the goddess attempting to hit Pan with her sandal.
24 Summer 2022 iLoveGreekMuseums 05 Museum of Cycladic Art
25 LiFO
Attica
IT WAS FOUNDED IN 1986 to house the collection of Nicholas and Dolly Goulandris who, starting in 1962, collected a “marble treasure” of Cycladic figurines and other antiquities handed down to us by the culture of the Aegean Sea, from the deepest prehistoric centuries until the end of the Roman era.
The main building of the museum was erected in 1985, in Kolonaki, the most elegant area in the center of Athens. In 1991, the Stathatos Mansion, a beautiful neighboring large neoclassical house, designed in 1895 by the architect Ernst Ziller, was added to the museum. The two buildings were connected by a closed external corridor. The Stathatos Mansion is used for periodicTheexhibitions.permanent collection of the museum is exhibited in the main building. On its first floor there are about 350 objects from the 3rd millennium BC and of course the older marble figurines. On the second floor of the building there are objects from the Bronze Age, that is from the 2nd millennium BC, until the late Roman period, in the 4th century AD.
The fourth floor houses the collection of antiquities of Karolos and Rita Politis, which they donated to the N.P. Goulandris Foundation in 1989. Among its acquisitions, the metal helmets of ancient warriors are particularly impressive.TheMuseum of Cycladic Art has a very fine shop with souvenirs and replicas of exhibits, with a great variety and the highest quality materials.
It is a museum of human dimensions which creates an evocative presentation of the exhibits on each of its exhibition floors, so that visitors can feel at once and to the fullest the awe caused by the purity, simplicity and perfection of the Cycladic marble figurines’ forms.
Museum of Cycladic Art 4 Neofytou Douka Str., Athens / Tel.: +30 210 7228321-3 / cycladic.gr / e-mail: museum@cycladic.gr / Opening Hours: Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday: 10:00-17:00, Thursday: 10:00-20:00, Sunday: 11:00-17:00, Closed: Tuesday / Tours of the permanent collections’ highlights every Monday, Wednesday and Friday / Last entrance allowed: 15 minutes before the closing time of the museum. Annual Holidays: December 25 & 26, January 1st, Clean Monday, March 25, Easter Sunday & Monday, May 1st, Holy Spirit Monday, August 15. / Tickets: General Admission: €10 / Monday admission and reduced entrance fee for persons over 65, persons 19-26 years old and students: €7
Corinth Nemea Epidaurus Mycenae Nafplio Aigion Stymphalia Patras Peloponnese Sparta Olympia
PeloponneseTempleofApollo,AncientCorinth,1884.
Photo: Getty images
IT IS A RATHER SMALL , simple and peaceful modernistic building, holding a big surprise: the collection of Mycenaean jewelry known as the “treasure of Aidonia” (treasure of the nightingales). The museum was sponsored by Rudolf A. Peterson, an American of Swedish descent (who was President of Bank of America and Administrator of the United Nations Development Program). The purpose of his donation was to serve the Archaeological Research Program of the University of California, Berkeley. In 1984, the Museum of Nemea was donated to the Greek state. The “treasure of Aidonia” is breathtaking at first glance. These are grave goods from a Mycenaean cemetery in the neighboring village of Aidonia, which is located near Lake Stymphalia and is considered to be that of the city of Arathyrea, which is praised by Homer in the Iliad. Gold signet ring engraved with a chariot scene. Part of the so-called "Aidonia Treasure", looted from the Mycenaean necropolis of Aidonia, west of Nemea. Ca. 1500 BCE.
54 Summer 2022 iLoveGreekMuseums
Gold signet ring with a scene of two processing women holding flowers; the ring is granulated.
Archaeological Museum of Nemea
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Archaeological Museum of Nemea Nemea 20500 / Tel.: +30 27460 22739 / Opening Hours: Until August 31: 08:00-20:00 (September 1-15: 08:00-19:30, September 16-30: 08:00-19:00, October 1-15: 08:00-18:30, October 16-30: 08:00-18:00) / Tickets: Full price: €6, Reduced: €3 (the ticket is also valid for entrance to the archaeological site)
SHUTTERSTOCK
55 LiFO Peloponnese
The “treasure” consists of uniquely fine gold jewelry from 1500 BC. The rest of this jewelry –all immensely beautiful– is made of glass beads, semi-precious stones, amber and faience – all of them incredible samples of perfectionism in craftsmanship and high aesthetics. They were first presented as antiquities for sale at auction in New York in the early 1990s. They were found there after an inconceivable attack of antiquity smugglers to 17 large vaulted Mycenaean tombs, which were filled with gold and ceramic objects. Archaeologists, however, managed to document the origin of the jewelry and achieved their repatriation through legal battles in 1996.
The archaeological site of Aidonia.
iLoveGreek Museums Guide