Benaki Museum

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).

Reduced admission:
50 %
- persons over 65
- an adult accompaning a child

BUSES
022, 060, 200, 203, 204, 211, 214, 220, 221, 222, 223, 224, 231, 235, 408, 419, 601, 603, 622, 815, Á5, Ã5, Å5È, Å6, Å7,
TROLLEY-BUSES
3, 7, 8, 13

METRO
lines 2, 3 (st

Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday: 9:00 – 17:00
Thursday: 9:00 – 24:00
Sunday: 9:00 – 15:00
Tuesday: closed

N. HADJIKYRIAKOS-GHIKAS GALLERY
Monday – Friday: 10:00 – 14:00. (upon request)

The collections include:

- Minoan finds from the city of Chania
- Prehistoric finds from caves
- Minoan items from various sites in the prefecture
- Finds from graves of the Geometric period
- Finds from the city of Chania, dated to historic times
- Finds from other towns of the Chania prefecture
- Coins Jewellery (prehistoric and historic times)
- Sculpture, inscriptions, stelae Mosaics

Opening Hours for Archaeological Sites, Museums and Monuments
November 1st, 2004 – March 31st, 2005
Monday: closed Tuesday-Sunday: 08.30-15.00
Holidays 6 January, Shrove Monday, Holy Saturday, East

Clay sealing from Kasteli, near Chania, with a representation of a Minoan city and its patron deity. Dated to the second half of the 15th century B.C.

Clay tablet inscribed with signs of the Linear A script from Kasteli near Chania, dated to 1450 B.C.

Small clay tablets with texts in Linear B script, from Kasteli near Chania. Dated to 1300 B.C.

Clay pyxis with a representation of a kithara player. It comes from a chamber tomb in the area of Koiliaris in Kalyves-Aptera and dates to 1300-1200 B.C.

Ancient Cycladic style Vessel, Episkopi, Kissamos

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

Holidays

- 6 January, Shrove Monday, Holy Saturday, Easter Monday, Holy Spirit Day, 28 October: 08.30-21.00

Wall painting from the apse of the inner sanctum of the churchof Aghios Georgios Lathrenou in Naxos. Above is shown the Deesis with a protome of Christ Pantokrator, the Virgin and John the Baptist worshipping. Co-celebrating below are the church prelates (hierarchoi) John Chrysostomos and Basil. It is dated in the 13th century.

Double sided ikon of St. George. On one side in a gold field is shown : in painted wood relief St. George, full length , worshipping Christ, around him painted scenes of his tribulations, above the Throne of Preparation with archangels, and below the donor worshipping. On the other side in a silver field are two full length female saints supplicating Christ. Unique among this type of ikon. Dated in the 13th century.

The Museum was inaugurated in 1975. Its aim and mission is the exhibition of war memontoes, the documentation and study of war history as well as the presentation of the stuggles for freedom of the Greek nation from ancient times to the present day.

The permanent exhibition area of the Museum includes Room 1, which is devoted to antiquity and covers the Stone Age and the Early Bronze Age, with an emphasis on the Mycenean era; Room 2, in which themes from the prehistory of Greece are presented through groups of photographs or drawings; Room 3 presents the Byzantine period, Room 4 the period of Frankish rule, Rooms 5-6 the Greek War of Indepedence, Room 7 the new greek State, Room 8 is devoted to the 1912-1913 Balkan Wars, Room 9 to the Balkan Wars and the First World War, room 10 to the historic period of the Greco-Italian War of 1941-1941 and the German invasion. On the mezzanine, the room is devoted to the first Greek airmen and the ground floor to the P. Saroglou collection. There is also an important and well-organized library in the Museum.

Many of the unique works of art that ornamented the Acropolis have been stolen and transferred abroad. The worst plundering of the monuments took place in the beginning of the 19th century by Lord Elgin.

The museum was designed by the architect Panages Kalkos and constructed between 1865 and 1874. In the 1950′s it was extended towards the east and the exhibition was rearranged by the archaeologist I. Meliades. The museum contains only the stone sculptures from the monuments of the Acropolis and from the excavations on the site. Since the beginning of the excavations, the vases and the bronzes have been kept in the National Archaeological Museum of Athens, while the inscriptions are housed in the Epigraphical Museum.

The collections of the museum include:

- Sculptural offerings of the Archaic period
- Pediments of temples dated to the Archaic period
- Archaic Horsemen
- Sculptures of the “Severe” style
- Pediments and metopes from the Parthenon
- The Parthenon frieze
- The Erechtheion frieze
- Parapets of the Athena Nike temple
- Frieze of the Athena Nike temple
- The Caryatids
- Clay figurines and vases from the sanctuary of the Nymphs.