What Is The Benaki Museum?

The Benaki Museum was established and donated by Antonis Benakis in 1930 in memory of his father Emmanuel Benakis. It is housed in the Benakis’ family mansion in downtown Athens, Greece.

The museum houses mostly Greek works of art from the prehistorical to the modern times as well as an extensive collection of Asian art. Today, it hosts periodic exhibitions and holds state-of-the-art restoration and conservation workshops.

Initially the museum housed a collection that included Islamic art, Chinese porcelain and exhibits on toys. With the reopening of the museum in 2000 it led to the establishment of satellite museums that focused on the specific collections. The main museum now focusses on Greek culture over the span of the country’s history.

The satellite museums are:

• Museum of Islamic Art
• The Ghika Gallery
• The Yannis Pappas Studio
• 138 Pireos St.
• ‘Nema”
• Toy Museum
• Delta House
• The Leigh Fermor House
• The Valadoros Collection

History

Antonis Benakis, a descendant of one of the leading families of the Greek diaspora, was born in Alexandria, Egypt in 1873. He began his career as a collector in Alexandria. After he moved to Athens in 1926, he decided to donate his collections to the Greek state.

The original museum started out in the Benakis’ house opposite the National Garden on Queen Sofias Avenue.

The building originally belonged to a businessman Panagis Charokopos until it was bought by the Benakis family in 1910. It was known as the Charokopos Mansion.

In 1911, the building was enlarged with the addition of a ballroom and the necessary auxiliary areas. Both the interior and exterior were redecorated by Anastasios Metaxas who was a well-known architect that restored the Panathenaic Stadium.

Antonis Benakis first established a library in the mansion and converted it into a museum in 1930. The opening ceremony was held on 22 April with the attendance of the President of the Republic, Alexandros Zaimis, and the Prime Minister Eleftherios Venizelos.

The following year the archaeologist Theodoros Makrides became director of the Museum. In the same year, the Benakis donated the family’s house in Athens and their collection of more than 37,000 Islamic and Byzantine objects to the museum.

By the 1970s more than 9,000 artifacts were added which encouraged donations from many other sources. Benakis remained active in the museum until his death in 1954.

Under the directorship of Angelos Delivorrias, the museum added more than 60,000 objects, books, and documents to the collection.

After an earthquake that damaged a great apart of the museum, following a $20 million renovation and restoration of the building, the museum was reopened in 2000.

Delivorrias came up with the idea to refocus the museum and its exhibits in 1973, but it was only 25 years later that this became a reality. The collections of Islamic Art and Chinese porcelain with paintings was moved to other locations in 2004 so that the main museum in Athens would focus solely on Greece.

Today the Islamic art collections of the Benaki Museum are housed in a complex of neo-classical buildings located in the Kerameikos district in the historical centre of Athens. Other major archaeological sites located in the same area include the grounds of the ancient Agora, the Doric temple of Hephaestus and the Museum of the ancient Kerameikos cemetery.

This complex of buildings that house the Islamic arts collection can be found at the corner of Agion Asomaton and Dipylou streets, and was donated to the Museum by Lambros Eftaxias, who in his later years served as Honorary President of the Museum Board of Trustees.

The museum was inaugurated in 2004, and occupies more than 1,000 square meters showcasing ceramics, pottery, metalwork, gold, woodcarvings, glasswork and textiles, bone carvings, inscribed funerary steles, arms and armour.

It includes masterpieces from India, Persia, Mesopotamia, the Middle East, Arabia, Egypt, North Africa, Sicily, Spain, and Asia Minor. It covers Islamic art from the 7^th through to the 19^th centuries and house a rich collection of Ottoman art from the Empire’s peak in the 16^th century.

Interest For Today

For more than 80 years, the Benaki Museum has been contributing to society with a rich and multifarious cultural legacy. Director Angelos Delivorrias opted to focus on displaying donated items to encourage public participation and strengthen the community’s ties to the museum.

The museum is unique in that it does not focus on nationalism but recognizes and celebrates the foreign influences on Greek culture. It became the only museum in Greece that entice visitors through all ages of Greek culture and history.

Since its inception it has opened seven public museums, five active archives, and seven conservation laboratories. It houses 120,000 artworks from the Palaeolithic period and donated 200,000 volumes that are housed in Greece’s museum library.

The Benaki Museum has been involved in organising 30 temporary exhibitions, 450 cultural events, and 516 educational programmes. More than 900 artworks from the museum’s collections have travelled around the world being exhibited in Canada and the United States in partnership with the Smithsonian Institution. In 2005, an Ancient Greek solid gold drinking cup left Greece for the first time and travelled to the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney and the Melbourne Immigration Museum in Melbourne, Australia, to be exhibited.

The Benaki Museum aims to:

• preserve and make accessible as widely as possible its diverse collections through all available channels of communication and display,
• support research onto history, archaeology and the study of material culture, architecture, photography, visual and performing arts and literature,
• educate and engage its audiences through permanent, temporary, and travelling exhibitions, courses, programmes, events, publications, and openly available resources,
• play an active role in fostering social cohesion, safeguarding world heritage and inspiring intercultural dialogue, and
• maintain a dynamic connection with ongoing cultural processes in Greece and beyond.

Business hours

• Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday: 10:00 – 18:00
• Thursday: 10:00 – 00:00
• Sunday: 10:00 – 16:00

Tickets

• Full Admission: € 12, reduced € 9
• Temporary Exhibition: € 8, reduced € 6
• e-tickets can also be purchased

Contact details

• Address: 1 Koumbari St. & Vas. Sofias Ave., 106 74 Athens
• Coordinates: 37°58′33.38″N, 23°44′25.47″E
• Telephone number: 210 367 1000
• Telephone number for tickets: 210 3671 057
• Email: benaki@benaki.gr

How To Get There

The museum can be reached by bus, trolley buses, metro, or private vehicle. It also provides private access to the disabled.