The document provides information on 8 museums located in Athens: 1) The Acropolis Museum celebrates International Museum Day on May 18th, 2016 with free entry. It houses artifacts from the Acropolis of Athens. 2) The National Historical Museum, founded in 1882, is located in the Old Parliament building and contains items from 1453-WWII emphasizing the Greek Revolution. 3) The National Gallery was founded in 1900 and owns a collection of over 20,000 works, being the treasury of Modern Greek art. 4) The National Archaeological Museum is the largest archaeological museum in Greece, displaying collections from pre-Hellenic to Roman eras. 5) The National Museum

1. MUSEUMS
IN ATHENSM O N T H L Y T R A V E L M A G A Z I N E
INTERNATIONAL
MUSEUM DAY
18 MAY
Most Popular
Museums
May 2017

2. Acropolis Museum
The museum was founded in
2003, while the Organization of
the Museum was established in
2008. It opened to the public
on 20 June 2009. Nearly 4,000
objects are exhibited over an
area of 14,000 square metres.
The Organization for the
Construction of the new
museum is chaired by Aristotle
University of Thessaloniki
Professor Emeritus of
Archaeology, Dimitrios
Pandermalis.
The Acropolis Museum is an
archaeological museum
focused on the findings of the
archaeological site of the
Acropolis of Athens. The
museum was built to house
every artifact found on the rock
and on the surrounding slopes,
from the Greek Bronze Age to
Roman and Byzantine Greece. It
also lies over the ruins of a part
of Roman and early Byzantine
Athens.
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MUSEUMS IN ATHENS
The Acropolis Museum
celebrates International
Museum Day on
Thursday 18 May 2016.
On this day, the Museum
will be open from 8 a.m.
to 8 p.m., with free entry
for its visitors.

3. NATIONAL HISTORY Museum
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.
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
to the Old Parliament, was
housed in the main building of
the National Technical
University.
The collection contains
historical items concerning the
period from the capture of
Constantinopolis by the
Ottomans in 1453 to the
Second World War,
emphasizing especially the
period of the Greek Revolution
and the subsequent
establishment of the modern
Greek state.
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MUSEUMS IN ATHENS
The National Historical
Museum founded in
1882, is the oldest of its
kind in Greece. It is
located in the Old
Parliament House at
Stadiou Street in Athens,
which housed the
Hellenic Parliament
between 1875 and 1932.

4. National GALLERY
Moreover, the National Gallery
owns a remarkable collection of
Western European paintings. In
1954, the National Gallery
merged with the Alexandros
Soutzos Estate, hence its
double name.
Its early collections came from
the National Technical
University and the University of
Athens. Substantial donations
came to be added to these.
Today, the National Gallery
collections comprise more than
20,000 works of painting,
sculpture, engraving and other
forms of art; this is the treasury
of Modern Greek art,
encompassing the period from
the post-Byzantine times until
today.
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MUSEUMS IN ATHENS
The National Gallery was
founded on April 10, 1900.
The institutional role of the
National Gallery is to
collect, safekeep, preserve,
study and exhibit works of
art towards the aesthetic
training of the public, the
on-going education
through art and the
recreation that it is able to
provide, as well as the self-
awareness of the Greek
people through history .

5. Archaeological museum
The Library
The National Archaeological
Museum’s Library is the oldest one
of the Archaeological Service and
one of the most important libraries
in the field of antiquity. There are
more than 25.000 titles of books,
some of them dated from as early
as the 17th century.
It was founded at the end of
the 19th century to house and
protect antiquities from all over
Greece, thus displaying their
historical, cultural and artistic
value.
Its collections are segregated
into:
*Sculpture,
*Vases,
*Clay and Bronze Figurines and
other Ancient Figurines made
of various materials,
*Pre-Hellenic (the Mycenaean
collection), and
*Egyptian.
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MUSEUMS IN ATHENS
The National
Archaeological Museum of
Athens is the largest
archaeological museum in
Greece and one of the most
important museums in the
world devoted to ancient
Greek art.

6. contemporary art museum
The first exhibition, entitled Urgent
Conversations: Athens – Antwerp
inaugurated in 31.10.2016 the
temporary exhibition spaces of
EMST simultaneously with the
Program EMST in the World.
The new reconstruction of the
former Fix brewery building has
been completed. However, only
the two levels of temporary
exhibitions are open. At this
point there is no permanent
collection on display. The
museum organizes exhibitions
that include parts of what will
become the permanent
collection of the museum.
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MUSEUMS IN ATHENS
The National Museum of
Contemporary Art is fairly
new since it started
operating in 2000. Its’ aim is
to offer an official space for
contemporary Greek and
foreign artists, to organize
exhibitions and eventually
to build its own collection.

7. benaki museum
Through its extensive
collections that cover several
different cultural fields and its
more general range of activities
serving more than one social
need, the Benaki Museum is
perhaps the sole instance of a
complex structure within the
broader network of museum
foundations in Greece.
The year 2017 is dedicated to
cultural exchanges between
Greece and the People's
Republic of China.
The Benaki Museum will
showcase exhibits from its
collection of Chinese art in a
specially-commissioned
cabinet,one for each month.
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MUSEUMS IN ATHENS
The Benaki Museum ranks
among the major
institutions that have
enriched the material assets
of the Greek state.
It is also the oldest museum
in Greece operating as a
Foundation under Private
Law.

8. CYCLADIC ART museum
The museum 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 1960s, the
couple collected Greek
antiquities, with special
interest in the prehistoric
art from the Cyclades
islands of the Aegean
Sea.
The ancient Cycladic culture
flourished in the islands of the
Aegean Sea from c. 3300 to
1100 BCE.[2] Along with the
Minoan civilization and
Mycenaean Greece, the
Cycladic people are counted
among the three major
Aegean cultures. Cycladic art
therefore comprises one of the
three main branches of
Aegean art.
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MUSEUMS IN ATHENS
The Nicholas P.
Goulandris
Foundation - Museum
of Cycladic Art is one
of the great museums
of Athens. It houses a
notable collection of
artifacts of Cycladic art.

9. 1st General Lyceum
Egaleo