1.
Museum
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Most large museums are located in major cities throughout the world and more local ones exist in smaller cities, towns and even the countryside. Museums have varying aims, ranging from serving researchers and specialists to serving the general public, the goal of serving researchers is increasingly shifting to serving the general public. There are many types of museums, including art museums, natural history museums, science museums, war museums, the city with the largest number of museums is Mexico City with over 128 museums. According to The World Museum Community, there are more than 55,000 museums in 202 countries, the English museum comes from the Latin word, and is pluralized as museums. The first museum/library is considered to be the one of Plato in Athens, however, Pausanias gives another place called Museum, namely a small hill in Classical Athens opposite to the Akropolis. The hill was called Mouseion after Mousaious, a man who used to sing on the hill, the purpose of modern museums is to collect, preserve, interpret, and display items of artistic, cultural, or scientific significance for the education of the public. The purpose can also depend on ones point of view, to a family looking for entertainment on a Sunday afternoon, a trip to a local history museum or large city art museum could be a fun, and enlightening way to spend the day. To city leaders, a healthy museum community can be seen as a gauge of the health of a city. To a museum professional, a museum might be seen as a way to educate the public about the museums mission, Museums are, above all, storehouses of knowledge. In 1829, James Smithsons bequest, that would fund the Smithsonian Institution, stated he wanted to establish an institution for the increase, Museums of natural history in the late 19th century exemplified the Victorian desire for consumption and for order. Gathering all examples of classification of a field of knowledge for research. As American colleges grew in the 19th century, they developed their own natural history collections for the use of their students, while many large museums, such as the Smithsonian Institution, are still respected as research centers, research is no longer a main purpose of most museums. While there is a debate about the purposes of interpretation of a museums collection, there has been a consistent mission to protect. Much care, expertise, and expense is invested in efforts to retard decomposition in aging documents, artifacts, artworks. All museums display objects that are important to a culture, as historian Steven Conn writes, To see the thing itself, with ones own eyes and in a public place, surrounded by other people having some version of the same experience can be enchanting. Museum purposes vary from institution to institution, some favor education over conservation, or vice versa. For example, in the 1970s, the Canada Science and Technology Museum favored education over preservation of their objects and they displayed objects as well as their functions. One exhibit featured a printing press that a staff member used for visitors to create museum memorabilia
2.
Greece
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Greece, officially the Hellenic Republic, historically also known as Hellas, is a country in southeastern Europe, with a population of approximately 11 million as of 2015. Athens is the capital and largest city, followed by Thessaloniki. Greece is strategically located at the crossroads of Europe, Asia, situated on the southern tip of the Balkan peninsula, it shares land borders with Albania to the northwest, the Republic of Macedonia and Bulgaria to the north, and Turkey to the northeast. Greece consists of nine regions, Macedonia, Central Greece, the Peloponnese, Thessaly, Epirus, the Aegean Islands, Thrace, Crete. The Aegean Sea lies to the east of the mainland, the Ionian Sea to the west, the Cretan Sea and the Mediterranean Sea to the south. Greece has the longest coastline on the Mediterranean Basin and the 11th longest coastline in the world at 13,676 km in length, featuring a vast number of islands, eighty percent of Greece is mountainous, with Mount Olympus being the highest peak at 2,918 metres. From the eighth century BC, the Greeks were organised into various independent city-states, known as polis, which spanned the entire Mediterranean region and the Black Sea. Greece was annexed by Rome in the second century BC, becoming a part of the Roman Empire and its successor. The Greek Orthodox Church also shaped modern Greek identity and transmitted Greek traditions to the wider Orthodox World, falling under Ottoman dominion in the mid-15th century, the modern nation state of Greece emerged in 1830 following a war of independence. Greeces rich historical legacy is reflected by its 18 UNESCO World Heritage Sites, among the most in Europe, Greece is a democratic and developed country with an advanced high-income economy, a high quality of life, and a very high standard of living. A founding member of the United Nations, Greece was the member to join the European Communities and has been part of the Eurozone since 2001. Greeces unique cultural heritage, large industry, prominent shipping sector. It is the largest economy in the Balkans, where it is an important regional investor, the names for the nation of Greece and the Greek people differ from the names used in other languages, locations and cultures. The earliest evidence of the presence of human ancestors in the southern Balkans, dated to 270,000 BC, is to be found in the Petralona cave, all three stages of the stone age are represented in Greece, for example in the Franchthi Cave. Neolithic settlements in Greece, dating from the 7th millennium BC, are the oldest in Europe by several centuries and these civilizations possessed writing, the Minoans writing in an undeciphered script known as Linear A, and the Mycenaeans in Linear B, an early form of Greek. The Mycenaeans gradually absorbed the Minoans, but collapsed violently around 1200 BC and this ushered in a period known as the Greek Dark Ages, from which written records are absent. The end of the Dark Ages is traditionally dated to 776 BC, the Iliad and the Odyssey, the foundational texts of Western literature, are believed to have been composed by Homer in the 7th or 8th centuries BC. With the end of the Dark Ages, there emerged various kingdoms and city-states across the Greek peninsula, in 508 BC, Cleisthenes instituted the worlds first democratic system of government in Athens
3.
Acropolis Museum
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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 slopes, from the Greek Bronze Age to Roman. It also lies over the ruins of a part of Roman, 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, the first museum was on the Acropolis, it was completed in 1874 and underwent a moderate expansion in the 1950s. However, successive excavations on the Acropolis uncovered many new artifacts which significantly exceeded its original capacity, creation of a gallery for the display of the Parthenon Marbles has been key to all recent proposals for the design of a new museum. The first architectural competition to design a new museum was held in 1976 and was limited to participants from Greece, both the 1976 competition and one that followed it in 1979 failed to produce any results mainly because the plots of land selected for the proposed constructions were deemed unsuitable. In 1989, a competition for the design of the new Acropolis Museum was announced that would be international. A choice of three sites was provided. This competition was won by the Italian architects, Manfredi Nicoletti, in retrospect, the location of the new museum was rather straightforward, the large lot of the unused Camp Makrygianni gendarmerie barracks, opposite the Theater of Dionysus. The barracks were built on land and a limited number of expropriations of surrounding private houses were needed to free up the necessary space. The main building of the old barracks, the neoclassical Weiler Building, has been renovated, the fourth competition had made no provision for the preservation of the ancient site. These were met to a degree only after local and international campaigners exposed this oversight, the new plans were adjusted so that the building was elevated above ground, on pillars. Competition was open only to architectural practices by invitation and it was won by New York–based architect, Bernard Tschumi, excavation has revealed two layers of modest, private roadside houses and workshops, one from the early Byzantine era and another from the classical era. Once the layout and stratigraphy of the findings were established, suitable locations for the pillars were identified. These traverse the soil to the bedrock and float on roller bearings able to withstand a Richter scale magnitude 10 earthquake. Greek officials expressed their hope that the new museum will help in the campaign for the return of the Parthenon Marbles, the museum is located by the southeastern slope of the Acropolis hill, on the ancient road that led up to the sacred rock in classical times. The entrance to the building is on Dionysiou Areopagitou Street and directly adjacent to the Akropoli metro station the red line of the Athens Metro, the design by Bernard Tschumi was selected as the winning project in the fourth competition
4.
Epigraphical Museum
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The Epigraphical Museum of Athens, Greece, is unique in Greece and the largest of its kind in the world. Its collection comprises 14,078, mostly Greek, inscriptions and it is situated in the south wing of the National Archaeological Museum of Athens. Only the courtyards, lobby and four rooms are open to the public, a full photographic archive of the collection is being assembled for future visitors. Inscriptiones Graecae, Consilio Et Auctoritate Academiae Scientiarium Berolinensis Et Brandenburgensis Editae Ministry of Culture, delphi, The Bellybutton of the Ancient World
5.
Kerameikos
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The area took its name from the city square or dēmos of the Kerameis, which in turn derived its name from the word κέραμος. The cemetery was also where the Ηiera Hodos began, along which the moved for the Eleusinian Mysteries. The quarter was located there because of the abundance of clay mud carried over by the Eridanos River, the area has undergone a number of archaeological excavations in recent years, though the excavated area covers only a small portion of the ancient dēmos. It was originally an area of marshland along the banks of the Eridanos river which was used as a cemetery as long ago as the 3rd millennium BC. It became the site of a cemetery from about 1200 BC, numerous cist graves. Houses were constructed on the drier ground to the south. During the Archaic period increasingly large and complex grave mounds and monuments were built along the bank of the Eridanos. The building of the new city wall in 478 BC, following the Persian sack of Athens in 480 BC, at the suggestion of Themistocles, all of the funerary sculptures were built into the city wall and two large city gates facing north-west were erected in the Kerameikos. The Sacred Way ran through the Sacred Gate, on the southern side, on the northern side a wide road, the Dromos, ran through the double-arched Dipylon Gate and on to the Platonic Academy a few miles away. State graves were built on side of the Dipylon Gate, for the interment of prominent personages such as notable warriors and statesmen. The construction of such lavish mausolea was banned by decree in 317 BC, the Roman occupation of Athens led to a resurgence of monument-building, although little is left of them today. During the Classical period an important public building, the Pompeion and this served a key function in the procession in honour of Athena during the Panathenaic Festival. It consisted of a courtyard surrounded by columns and banquet rooms. During the 2nd century AD, a storehouse was constructed on the site of the Pompeion, the ruins became the site of potters workshops until about 500 AD, when two parallel colonnades were built behind the city gates, overrunning the old city walls. A new Festival Gate was constructed to the east with three entrances leading into the city and this was in turn destroyed in raids by the invading Avars and Slavs at the end of the 6th century, and the Kerameikos fell into obscurity. It was not rediscovered until a Greek worker dug up a stele in April 1863, Archaeological excavations in the Kerameikos began in 1870 under the auspices of the Greek Archaeological Society. They have continued from 1913 to the present day under the German Archaeological Institute at Athens, during the construction of Kerameikos station for the expanded Athens Metro, a plague pit and approximately 1,000 tombs from the 4th and 5th centuries BC were discovered. The Greek archaeologist Efi Baziotopoulou-Valavani, who excavated the site, has dated the grave to between 430 and 426 BC, thucydides described the panic caused by the plague, possibly an epidemic of typhoid which struck the besieged city in 430 BC
6.
National Archaeological Museum, Athens
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The National Archaeological Museum in Athens houses some of the most important artifacts from a variety of archaeological locations around Greece from prehistory to late antiquity. It is considered one of the greatest museums in the world, the first national archaeological museum in Greece was established by prime minister of Greece Ioannis Kapodistrias in Aigina in 1829. 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. In 1887 the important archaeologist Valerios Stais became the museums curator, during World War II the museum was closed and the antiquities were sealed in special protective boxes and buried, in order to avoid their destruction and looting. In 1945 exhibits were displayed under the direction of Christos Karouzos. The south wing of the houses the Epigraphic Museum with the richest collection of inscriptions in the world. The inscriptions museum expanded between 1953 and 1960 with the designs of Patroklos Karantinos. The museum has an imposing neo-classical design which was popular in Europe at the time and is in accordance with the classical style artifacts that it houses. The initial plan was conceived by the architect Ludwig Lange and it was modified by Panagis Kalkos who was the main architect, Armodios Vlachos. At the front of the museum there is a large neo-classic design garden which is decorated with sculptures, the building has undergone many expansions. These expansions were necessary to accommodate the growing collection of artifacts. The most recent refurbishment of the museum more than 1.5 years to complete. The Minoan frescoes rooms opened to the public in 2005, on May 2008 the Culture Minister Mihalis Liapis inaugurated the much anticipated collection of Egyptian antiquities and the collection of Eleni and Antonis Stathatos. Today, there is a discussion regarding the need to further expand the museum to adjacent areas. A new plan has made for a subterranean expansion at the front of the museum. The museums collections are organised in sections, The prehistoric collection displays objects from the Neolithic era, Early and Mid-Bronze age, objects classified as Cycladic and Mycenaean art. There are ceramic finds from various important Neolithic sites such as Dimini and Sesclo from middle Helladic ceramics from Boeotia, Attica, some objects from Heinrich Schliemann excavations in Troy are also on display. Cycladic collection features the famous marble figurines from the Aegean islands of Delos and Keros including the Lutist, of great interest are the two golden cups from Vafeio showing a scene of the capture of a bull
7.
Stoa of Attalos
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The Stoa of Attalos was a stoa in the Agora of Athens, Greece. It was built by and named after King Attalos II of Pergamon, the current building was reconstructed from 1952–1956 by American architects. Typical of the Hellenistic age, the stoa was more elaborate, the stoas dimensions are 115 by 20 metres and it is made of Pentelic marble and limestone. The building skillfully makes use of different architectural orders, the Doric order was used for the exterior colonnade on the ground floor with Ionic for the interior colonnade. This combination had been used in stoas since the Classical period and was by Hellenistic times quite common, on the first floor of the building, the exterior colonnade was Ionic and the interior Pergamene. Each story had two aisles and twenty-one rooms lining the western wall, the rooms of both stories were lighted and vented through doorways and small windows located on the back wall. There were stairways leading up to the story at each end of the stoa. The building is similar in its design to the Stoa that Attalos brother. The main difference is that Attalos stoa had a row of rooms at the rear on the floor that have been interpreted as shops. The stoa is identified as a gift to the city of Athens for the education that Attalos received there, a dedicatory inscription on the architrave is engraved as built by Attalos II, ruler of Pergamon from 159 BC to 138 BC. The stoa was in frequent use until it was destroyed by the Heruli in 267, the ruins became part of a fortification wall, which made it easily seen in modern times. The Stoa of Attalos houses the Museum of the Ancient Agora and its exhibits are mostly connected with the Athenian democracy. Fotopedia. com, Selected photos of the Stoa of Attalus Ministry of Culture, The Museum The Museum Stoa of Attalos photos
8.
Byzantine and Christian Museum
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The Byzantine and Christian Museum is situated at Vassilissis Sofias Avenue in Athens, Greece. It is one of the most important museums in the world in Byzantine Art, in June 2004, in time for its 90th anniversary and the 2004 Athens Olympics, the museum reopened to the public after an extensive renovation and the addition of another wing. The gallery is situated on Vassilissis Sofias Avenue 22, down the street from the Hilton Athens and it can be reached with the Athens Metro at the Evangelismos station. Byzantine Art List of museums in Greece Official website Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Tourism
9.
Drossinis Museum
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The museum was founded in 1997 with the aim to preserve and promote Drossinis’ multidimensional work. Going upstairs, the first hall on the right is the Intellectual Hall, numerous exhibits demonstrate his significant presence in letters and his important contribution to education in Greece. Here one can find archived all issues of Estia newspaper, of which Drossinis was editor-in-chief and director, the poet’s collaborations in Greek publications or foreign ones – Cypriot, French, German and American – can also be found in this hall. The hall on the left is the Emotional Hall and it is Drossinis’ bedroom, where the visitor has the feeling that the poet is constantly present. Photos of Mesolonghi, Drossinis’s birthplace, on the walls and others of his friends and relatives, fishing and hunting equipment reveal his great love of nature – Drossinis also wrote books about fishing and hunting – while religious icons express his deep faith. These objects, together with sculptures by Tombros and Vitsaris, surround the figure as portrayed by the sculptor Angeliki Vlachopoulou sitting in his armchair at old age. The third hall is the ‘Folk’ Hall and it is the largest part of the museum and the most interesting one, especially for the younger visitors. The heroes of his writings and his life are here, clay figures in real-life size – most works are by A. Vlachopoulou – represent vividly the world of his prose. Finally, the association organises conferences on topics related to special needs, official website of the Drossinis Museum
10.
Eleftherios Venizelos
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As leader of the Liberal Party, he was elected several times as Prime Minister of Greece, serving from 1910 to 1920 and from 1928 to 1933. Venizelos had such influence on the internal and external affairs of Greece that he is credited with being the maker of modern Greece. His first entry into the scene was with his significant role in the autonomy of the Cretan State. Soon, he was invited to Greece to resolve the political deadlock, not only did he initiate constitutional and economic reforms that set the basis for the modernization of Greek society, but also reorganized both army and navy in preparation of future conflicts. Before the Balkan Wars of 1912–1913, Venizelos catalytic role helped gain Greece entrance to the Balkan League, through his diplomatic acumen, Greece doubled its area and population with the liberation of Macedonia, Epirus, and most of the Aegean islands. In World War I, he brought Greece on the side of the Allies, however, his pro-Allied foreign policy brought him into direct conflict with the monarchy, causing the National Schism. The Schism polarized the population between the royalists and Venizelists and the struggle for power between the two groups affected the political and social life of Greece for decades. Following the Allied victory, Venizelos secured new territorial gains, especially in Anatolia, despite his achievements, he was defeated in the 1920 General Election, which contributed to the eventual Greek defeat in the Greco-Turkish War. In his subsequent periods in office Venizelos succeeded in restoring relations with Greeces neighbors. In 1935 he resurfaced from retirement to support a military coup and its failure severely weakened the Second Hellenic Republic, the republic that he had created. In the 18th century, the ancestors of Venizelos, named Cravvatas, lived in Mystras, in southern Peloponnese. During the Ottoman raids in the peninsula in 1770, a member of the Cravvatas family, Venizelos Cravvatas and his sons discarded their patronymic and called themselves Venizelos. The family was of Laconic, Maniot, and Cretan origin, Eleftherios was born in Mournies, near Chania in then-Ottoman Crete to Kyriakos Venizelos, a Cretan merchant and revolutionary, and Styliani Ploumidaki. When the Cretan revolution of 1866 broke out, Venizelos family fled to the island of Syros and they were not allowed to return to Crete, and stayed in Syros until 1872, when Abdülaziz granted an amnesty. He spent his year of secondary education at a school in Ermoupolis in Syros from which he received his Certificate in 1880. In 1881 he enrolled at the University of Athens Law School and he returned to Crete in 1886 and worked as a lawyer in Chania. Throughout his life he maintained a passion for reading and was improving his skills in English, Italian, German. The situation in Crete during Venizelos early years was fluid, the Ottoman empire was undermining the reforms, which were made under international pressure, while the Cretans desired to see the Sultan, Abdul Hamid II, abandon the ungrateful infidels
