Location: Vasilissis Sofias 22, Kolonaki, Plateia Rigilis, Athens
Tel. 210 729 4926
Subway: Evangelismos
Trolley: 3, 7, 8, 13
Open: 8:30am- 3pm Tue- Sun
Closed: public holidays
Official site
The Byzantine and Christian Museum of Athens is
the main Athenian museum, and one of the most important in Greece,
for art collections of late antiquity and the Byzantine Middle Ages.
The museum was founded in 1924 to house the collections of the
Christian Archaeological Society, created in 1914, until then hosted
by the National Archaeological Museum of Athens; such collections
had been started in 1884 by Georgios Lambakis, one of the founders
of the company.
Since 1930 the museum has been housed in
Villa Ilissia, on Viale Vasilissis Sofias, a residence built in 1848
for the Duchess of Piacenza, Sophie de Marbois-Lebrun, by the Greek
architect Stamatios Kleanthis.
This museum holds Byzantine
works covering the entire history of the Empire (395-1453).
Attached to the museum is a rich library of about fifteen thousand
volumes dedicated to art, literature, architecture and institutions
of the Byzantine Empire (open every working day from 9 to 13).
Initially, the museum was located on the first floor
of the Academy of Athens. In 1930, he received his own building - Villa
Ilisia, the winter residence of Sophia de Marbois, Duchess of Piacenza,
on Vasilisis Sophias Avenue, in the central district of Athens Ilisia.
Villa Ilisia was built in 1848 by the Greek architect Stamatis
Kleantis. The estate, as well as the Ilisia district, got its name from
the name of the Ilisos River, the waters of which flowed in front of the
main entrance. Later, Ilisos was covered in concrete, today its waters
flow on an open surface only in the Keramik area. Under the guidance of
Professor Georgios Sotiros, the architect Aristotelis Zachos prepared
the building to house the museum exposition.
In 1993, work began
to expand the area of the museum, three underground floors were built.
The main architect of the project was Manos Perrakis. The appearance of
the estate of Ilisia has remained unchanged. The entrance runs through a
small building with a portico, which used to be a house for servants,
and now it is an administrative building. From the latter, visitors
enter a spacious courtyard surrounded by numerous buildings, in the
center of the courtyard there is a fountain with samples of early
Christian mosaics.
The museum building itself is two-storied, has
a basement and in itself is a monument of architecture. Outside, its
walls are covered with marble slabs.
The museum contains a collection of objects that allow to expose the
Byzantine and post-Byzantine heritage of Greece. Among them are icons ,
mosaics, ceramic vessels, sculptures, inscriptions, miniatures,
frescoes, architectural features, manuscripts, and ecclesiastical
garments.
It is divided into two main sections: the Byzantine
collection, which covers from the 4th to the 15th century , and the
post-Byzantine collection, which covers from the 15th to the 20th
century .
Highlights in the Byzantine Collection section include
a 4th-century marble statuette of a shepherd with a ram on his
shoulders, a 4th- century marble relief depicting Orpheus playing the
lyre and surrounded by animals , an elongated marble plaque from the
13th century with the representation of the birth of Christ, the fresco
of the so-called "Virgin of the Catalans", from the 15th century , an
icon of Saint George with a female figure in a praying attitude, from
the 13th century , a 14th- century icon of the Archangel Michael, an
icon showing a crucifixion with the Virgin Mary and Saint John on one
side and the Virgin Mary on the other, from the 14th century , a
manuscript of a chrysobula from the year 1301, an icon in a mosaic
called "Panagia Glycofilusa" , depicting the Virgin Mary and Christ
embracing and pressing their cheeks together, from the 13th century and
another icon of the Virgin Mary called "Incomparable" showing Mary
holding Christ, who is lying in his mother's arms, of the fourteenth
century .