Benaki Museum

ΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΑ

Benaki Museum

Contact Information

Address: 1 Koumbari Street, 106 74 Athens

Phone: +30 210 36710679

Website : https://www.benaki.org

Facebook. TheBenakiMuseum

The Benaki Museum

The Benaki Museum, founded and donated in 1930 by Antonis Benakis in memory of his father, Emmanuel Benakis, is housed in the family's neoclassical mansion in Athens, Greece. The museum hosts works of art ranging from prehistory to the modern era, an extensive collection of Asian art, organizes temporary exhibitions, and operates a state-of-the-art conservation and restoration laboratory. Although the museum originally featured a collection that included Islamic art, Chinese porcelain, and toy exhibits, its reopening in 2000 led to the establishment of satellite museums focused on specific collections, allowing the central museum to concentrate on Greek culture throughout the nation's history. Located in Athens, the museum houses more than 100,000 objects from Greek history, highlighting the many eras, civilizations, and cultures that influenced Greece's development. Spread across several locations, it ranks among Greece’s foremost cultural institutions.

History

Antonis Benakis began collecting the items that would later be exhibited while living in Egypt, 30 years before founding the museum. In 1926, he permanently settled in Athens and decided to donate both the Benaki Museum and his family home to the Greek state, with the museum officially inaugurated on April 22, 1931.

Main Building in Athens

The museum's main headquarters is located in the Benaki family home, across from the National Garden on Queen Sofia Avenue. Its existence is owed to the generosity of Antonis Benakis, whose family hailed from Alexandria, Egypt.

In 1931, Benakis donated his family’s home in Athens and their collection of over 37,000 Islamic and Byzantine artifacts. By the 1970s, over 9,000 additional items had been added, encouraging donations from other sources. Benakis remained actively involved in the museum until his death in 1954.

Under the leadership of Angelos Delivorrias, the museum acquired over 60,000 objects, books, and documents, some purchased and others donated. Delivorrias chose to emphasize the presentation of donations to encourage public engagement and strengthen the museum’s community ties. The museum also emphasizes the idea that Greek history does not begin or end with specific events but is a continuous thread extending into the present.

Several of the museum’s exhibits have traveled worldwide, including to Canada in 2008, to the U.S. in 1959 in collaboration with the Smithsonian Institution, and in 2005, when an ancient Greek gold cup was displayed outside of Greece for the first time at Sydney’s Powerhouse Museum and the Immigration Museum in Melbourne, Australia.

Reopening in 2000

In 2000, the Benaki Museum reopened after a major renovation and restoration project costing $20 million, prompted by earthquake damage to the building. The renovation transformed it into the only museum in Greece that allows visitors to walk through all the phases of Greek culture and history. It is also unique in that it does not focus on nationalism but instead acknowledges and celebrates foreign influences on Greek culture.

Although the museum's director Angelos Delivorrias envisioned this reorientation in 1973, it took over 25 years to come to fruition. This vision included relocating the Islamic art and Chinese porcelain collections to other venues, allowing the central museum in Athens to focus exclusively on Greece.

Satellite (Regional) Museums

Over the years, the museum has been enriched by further donations and now includes the seaside Kouloura Monument in Palaia Fokaia, which hosts the Toy Museum; the Benaki Museum of Islamic Art in the Kerameikos area; the Nikos Hadjikyriakos-Ghika Gallery in central Athens; the Benaki Museum Annex at 138 Piraeus Street; and the Penelope Delta House in Kifisia, which houses the Historical Archive Collection.

Benaki Museum of Islamic Art

As part of the museum’s reorientation toward Greek culture, its Islamic collection was moved to a new space in 2004 in preparation for the Athens Olympic Games. The new museum also includes galleries for temporary exhibitions.

The Islamic art collections are housed in a group of neoclassical buildings in the historic center of Athens, in the Kerameikos district. Notable archaeological sites in the area include the ancient Agora (currently being developed), the Doric Temple of Hephaestus (the “Theseion”), and the Museum of the ancient Kerameikos necropolis. The building complex, located at the corner of Agion Asomaton and Dipylou Streets, was donated to the museum by the late Lambros Eftaxias, who served as Honorary President of the Museum’s Board of Trustees in his later years.

The museum was inaugurated on July 27, 2004, and now occupies over 1,000 square meters of restored space, showcasing ceramics, pottery, metalwork, gold, woodcarvings, glass, textiles, ivory sculptures, funerary steles, weapons, and armor. The museum’s collection is considered one of the most significant worldwide and includes masterpieces from India, Persia, Mesopotamia, the Middle East, Arabia, Egypt, North Africa, Sicily, Spain, and Asia Minor. Covering Islamic art from the 7th to the 19th century, it features a rich collection of Ottoman art from the empire’s peak in the 16th century.

Collections

The museum developed its collections based on Antonis Benakis's original holdings of ancient, Byzantine, post-Byzantine, Islamic, and folk art. Although non-Greek elements are now housed separately from the main collection, they are still presented in a way that highlights their influence on Greek cultural heritage.

Greek Historical Timeline of the Main Building

The room-by-room tour of the central building follows a chronological sequence:

Room 1: Paleolithic and Neolithic artifacts

Room 2: Early Bronze Age

Room 3: Middle Bronze Age and Mycenaean civilization

Room 4: Geometric and Archaic periods

Room 5: Classical Greece

Room 6: Hellenistic period

Room 7: Roman Greece

Room 8: Early Christian and Byzantine periods

Room 9: Medieval and post-Byzantine eras

Room 10 and onwards: Exhibits from the Ottoman period, the Greek War of Independence (1821), the Modern Greek State, and modern-day Greece.

Museum of Islamic Art

It is unique in its kind in the Balkans. It began with the collection of Antonis Benakis and expanded through donations and acquisitions. It spans four floors:

7th to 12th century

12th to 16th century

17th century: includes a villa installation, treasures from Iran and Turkey

1796–1925: weapons and jewelry from Iran

Collection of Coptic Art

Rich in textiles, a large number of vessels, wood carvings, and metal objects.

Collection of Chinese Art

Ceramic art from the 3rd century BC to the 19th century, Neolithic vessels, funerary sculpture, and decorated trade goods.

Toy Museum

Based on the collection of Maria Argyriadi, it is among the best in Europe. It includes toys, books, clothing, and children's items from around the world.

Photographic Archives

300,000 negatives and 25,000 photographs.

Other Activities

The museum exhibits parts of its collections abroad. In Greece, it organizes around 30 temporary exhibitions, 450 cultural events, and over 500 educational programs annually. It also houses the largest museum library in Greece, with 200,000 volumes, and maintains 7 conservation labs for the preservation of artworks.

The mission of the Benaki Museum is:

to protect and make widely accessible its diverse collections through every possible channel of communication and display,

to support scientific research in the fields of history, archaeology, material culture studies, architecture, photography, the visual and performing arts, and literature,

to educate its public through permanent, temporary, and touring exhibitions, classes, programs, events, publications, and open access media,

to play an active role in achieving social cohesion, safeguarding global cultural heritage, and fostering intercultural dialogue, and

to maintain a dynamic relationship with developments in both the Greek and international cultural landscapes.