Byzantine and Christian museum of Athens

The Byzantine and Christian Musée of Athens is the principal Athenian museum, and one of most important of Greece, for the collections of art of the late Antiquité and the Byzantine Moyen-âge .

At the origin of this museum, the collections of the archaeological Christian Société are, created in 1914, mainly made up until in 1884 by one of its founding members, Georges Lambakis. Until 1924, date of the foundation of the museum, these collections were exposed to the archaeological National museum of Athens.

The museum knew several successive localizations: of its opening to the public in 1924 with 1930, it was installed in the basement of the Académie of Athens. In September 1930, it was moved in the Villa Ilissia, a large residence construtie in 1848 for the Duchess of Pleasure, Sophie de Marbois-Lebrun, by the Greek architect Stamatios Kleanthis. The transformation of this villa designed on the model of the villas of Toscane of the Renaissance was the work of Aristotelis Zachos, in 1928, while the museographic organization of the collections was allocated to the director of the museum of the time, the archeologist Georges Sotiriou.

Of 1930 with 2003, the presentation of the collections remained thus essentially unchanged. The three rooms of the ground floor were arranged to present three types of churches: the basilica paléochrétienne with three naves, the church of plan in Byzantine registered cross and the vault post-Byzantine. The first stage presented the small objects and the icons, organized in a typological way.

The collections of the museum include/understand more 25 000 objects, dating from the 3rd century at the 20th century, and comprise sculptures as well, as icons, minor objets d'art, frescos mural, ceramic, fabrics, manuscripts, prints, engravings, incunables, and mosaics. The geographical surface of their source corresponds to all the affected regions by the Byzantine Greek culture.

Starting from 1993 was undertaken a vast program of enlarging and reorganization of the museum: a vast complex semi-underground of 12 000 m were built to shelter the collections of the villa. The objective of the program is to integrate the museum in an archaeological park also including/understanding the ancient site of the Lycée of Aristote.

The new permanent collections opened their doors in July 2004, and are organized in spaces sets of themes covering the period protobyzantine and Byzantine, of the 4th century at the 15th century. The reorganization is still unfinished, since it is envisaged to expose part of works post-Byzantines.

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