Home See & Do Museums & Arts Must-Visit Museums in Athens

Must-Visit Museums in Athens

A trip to the art & history-woven city shall include several museums in its must-see list for sure. Hosting plenty of them, Athens exhibits its cultural heritage and this legacy’s contemporary reflections in diverse galleries.

Acropolis Museum

Designed to offer the best comfort it can provide for its unique exhibits, the Acropolis museum dedicated to the iconic site should draw your attention. Almost like a portal to the magnificent world of ancient Athens, it hosts invaluable artifacts excavated through the still ongoing archaeological workshops in Acropolis. The timespan reaches from the Mycenaean times up to the Roman and Early Christian eras.

National Archaeological Museum

Dates back to 1889, National Archaeological Museum ranks among the top museums of its kind. From vases to sculptures, boasting more than eleven thousand items displayed in the structure (which makes it the largest museum in the city), it gives a comprehensive panorama of the whole Ancient Greek civilization era. Be sure to look for the computer-like Antikithira Device that still baffles the archaeologists and historians. If you like the device, you can also visit the Museum of Ancient Greek Technology.

The Goulandris Museum of Natural History

A museum with its hands-on activities and pre-school or primary education programs, this museum is preferable for children. From galleries of botany to paleontology and exhibited studies on flora & fauna & the marine environment, you can discover the kingdom of plants and animals too in Athens.

The Goulandris Museum of Cycladic Art

The Goulandris Foundation also dedicated a museum to ancient Aegean and Cypriot Cultures that mainly focus on Cycladic Art of the 3rd millennium BC. You can learn about ancient crafting techniques of these designs as well as witness some contemporary acts. Yet, the same foundation also has a museum of modern art including rare works by masters of the European avant-garde, as well as works by distinguished Greek modern painters.

Benaki Museum

Part of a neo-classical building, Benaki Museum has three separate sections that specialize in certain different subjects. Beginning from the ancient era as well, it also offers an inside look at the modern history & art of Greece while its new departments on Psiri and Piraeus exhibit Neohellenic archives of architecture and Islamic collections of art, including the objects collected by Benakis himself in Egypt.

Athens Olympic Museum

The Hellenic Olympic Committee (HOC) and the International Olympic Committee (IOC) collaborate to run the Athens Olympic Museum (IOC). The museum is also a part of the International Network of Olympic Museums. The Athens Olympic Museum was founded by Lamda Development S.A.

The museum’s displays are divided into three sections, each focusing on one of the three major Olympic timeframes: