Acropolis Museum Celebrates 12th Birthday With New Presentation

The Acropolis Museum, located in the center of Athens, celebrated its twelfth year of operation on Sunday.

As has become tradition, the museum honored its birthday by granting visitors a reduced entry price of €5 ($6), valid for all of its exhibitions. The Museum’s opening hours are 8 AM to 8 PM.

Acropolis Museum unveils new presentation

On the Museum’s birthday it also opened a new thematic presentation to the public, titled “Marathon – Salamis : In traces of myth and history.”

This exciting new feature offered to guests allows visitors to discuss the Persian wars with the Museum’s archaeologists. The wars are considered through the lens of their impact on the western world and the importance of the battle of Marathon in the later victory of the Greek forces at Salamis.

It also takes a look at the combatants and the role played by the gods and goddesses of Greek mythology in the psyches of the combatants, as well as the destruction of the Acropolis and the rebirth it experienced following the Greek victory. Finally, visitors and archaeologists discuss how these themes are presented within the museum itself.

The thematic presentation will continue after the Museum’s birthday, offered to visitors every Friday and Sunday. There is a cap on each session of eight individuals and places are allocated on a first come, first served basis.

These sessions are offered in both Greek and English in order for them to be accessible to a wide variety of guests.

Museums forced to close for more than half the year

Due to the coronavirus pandemic, the Acropolis Museum and all other cultural centers in Greece were forced to close for more than six months straight. This obviously had a huge impact which one would presume to be negative; however, it seems that the Acropolis Museum made lemonade out of lemons.

Ahead of the museum’s reopening on May 14 following a long closure due to the coronavirus pandemic, Stamatia Eleftheratou, the world-renowned museum’s director, spoke to the press.

Eleftheratou explained that the state of the art facility’s closure during the most recent lockdown actually provided the perfect opportunity to tackle major projects that needed to be done.

“This period gave us the opportunity to restore a number of ancient works and to exhibit some others; but mainly to complete a large project, the Digital Acropolis Museum,” she told the press.

“It is a diverse program, with many sectors, one of which was the creation of the new website, the launch of which coincided with the lockdown period, giving the Museum the opportunity to address, if not its physical, at least its digital audience, which is just as large,” she added.

Now that the coronavirus lockdown has been lifted, those interested can enjoy both in-person visits and online contact with the Acropolis Museum.