Athens, National Archaeological Museum

Q637187

That was not very clever: visiting the National Archaeological Museum on the last day of a two week trip through northern and central Greece. Of course, it was a nice summary of everything we’ve seen, but I think it would have been better to start over here. Ever a teacher, I might have used the museum’s splendid collection of sculpture to explain to my companions the development of Greek art.

That’s what you’ll find on the first floor: lots of sculpture in a series of rooms surrounding a large hall, which is devoted to Mycenaean art. There, you will find the golden objects from Mycenae that Schliemann found. The sculpture rooms surround it. Your tour starts with some kouroi and you can easily follow the growth to greater accuracy in representing the human body. When you’ve finished about a third of your tour, the Greek sculptors have mastered every aspect of anatomy, and you will pass along many classical sculptures, including two dazzling copies of the Diadumenus and the Cnidian Aphrodite. After that, more sculpture: the fourth century, Hellenism, and finally the Roman age.

On the ground floor, there’s also a series of rooms that contain metal art. Here, you will see the Anticythera Mechanism, but also collections of arrowheads from Marathon and Thermopylae. The Egyptian part – also on the ground floor – is a bit odd in a museum dedicated to Greek art, but the collection is too small to be exposed in a museum of its own and too important to keep stored away. In the Hellenistic part of the Egyptian collection, I noticed a statue of Hephaestion that I had never seen before.

Upstairs, you will find a marvelous collection of pottery and some objects that don’t fit anywhere else, like the Lemnian inscription, written in a language related to Etruscan. Next to it is a section dedicated to the investigations at Santorini, where some splendid frescoes have been found.

Do not forget to visit the basement. There’s a little café with a garden, where you will see some of the sculptures found in the Anticythera wreck. They have a certain beauty because they are partly eroded. I found the giant Heracles absolutely fascinating.

This museum was visited in 1989, 1992, 2004, 2007, 2010.

76 pictures related to this museum

Marathon, Arrowheads	Hellenistic ruler	Aegina, Temple of Apollo, Statue of a wounded warrior	Piraeus, Funerary stela with ball players
Athens, Pnyx, Lenormant Athena	Smyrna, Portrait of Caligula, reworked to resemble Titus	Argos, Theater, Statue of Aphrodite	Athens, Kerameikos, Siren
Nysa, Bouleuterion, "Little Refugee"	Corinth, Plate with Demeter	Oropos, Aeolian-Ionic capital	Piraeus, Statue of a woman or Demeter
Athens, Kerameikos, Base of the statue of a wrestler	Megiste, Bellerophon sarcophagus.	Melos, Statue of Poseidon	Mycene, Wall painting ("La Parisienne")
Piraeus, Head of a bearded god	Mycene, House of the Warrior Krater, Warrior Krater	Argos, Heraion, Sima	Eleusis, Relief of a drunk Heracles
Piraeus, Julian the Apostate	Argos, Heraion, Amazonomachy	Decree of Tefnakht	Argos, Relief of the Doryphorus of Polykleitos
Athens, Kerameikos, Alexander with a Lion's Pelt	Zeus and Ganymedes	Gomphoi, Relief of Odysseus and Amphicleia	Eretria, Lekythos (Bosanquet Painter)
Megara, Statue of Dionysus	Lebadeia, Relief of Trophonius	Epidauros, Temple of Artemis, Nike	Alexandria, Hephaestion (part of a group with Alexander)
Lycian portrait of Omphale	Eleusis, Temple F, Cecrops and Herse	Olympia, Head of the boxer Satyros	Aegina, Ptolemy VI Philometor
Larisa, Tombstone of Polyxena	Argos, Heraion, West pediment, Head of Hera	Thebes (?), Block statue of Prince Horwedja, governor and high priest in Heliopolis	Thebes, Tombstone
Athens, Kerameikos, Dipylon krater	Eleusis, Tombstone of a warrior	Lemnos, Tombstone of an Etruscan (?) warrior	Dodona, Figurine of Zeus Keraunos
Mycene, Wall painting of a griffin with a warrior	Mycene, Boar's tusk helmet	Piraeus, Funerary stela of Damasistrate	Corinth, Relief of a hoplite
The fight for the body of Patroclus.	Larisa, Tombstone of a man with a hat	Eucratides II of Bactria	Akrotiri, Building B, Room B1, Wall painting of antelopes
Eretria, Gymnasium, Statue of Cleonicus	Alexandria, Alexander the Great (part of a group with Hephaestion)	Piraeus, Theater, Head of Dionysus (classicizing)	Eleusis, Relief of Demeter, Triptolemus, and Kore
Lead figurine of Athena	Argos, Heraion, West pediment, Palladion	Athens, Kerameikos, Skull of Myrthis	Megara, Statue of a Roman emperor (Trajan or Hadrian)
Mycene, Dagger with lion hunt	Athens, Varvakeion Athena	Akrotiri, Building B, Room B1, Wall painting of boxers	Sparta, Statue of Julia Aquilia Severa, damaged after her death
Athens, Statue of a Minotaur	Athens, Stoa of Attalus, Attalus II Philadelphus	Sais, Temple of Neith, Statuette	Athens, Agora, Late Geometric pyxis
Aegina, Tombstone of a young man, holding a bird	Chalcis-Vromousa, Head of a woman (Roman copy of a Greek original)	Artemisium, Statue of Zeus	Piraeus, Votive stela of a reclining Dionysus
Thebes, Head of Artemis	Athens, Temple of Zeus, Portrait of Polemo of Laodicea	Thermopylae, Arrowheads	Pharsalus, Krater with a four-horse chariot