At the outbreak of World War II, when the Axis forces launched their offensive on Greece, everybody’s main concern was, naturally, the risk to freedom and the imminent threat to the life and livelihood of the Greek people. Nonetheless, at the same time that the glorious Greek Resistance was taking shape, the young state didn’t omit to preserve the core of the Greek nation’s valuable past.
A niche exhibition launched at the Hellenic National Archaeological Museum on October 12, 2026, on the 82nd anniversary of the liberation of Athens, chronicles the little-known story of how ancient Greek treasures were protected from the Nazis during the 1941-1944 occupation.
An order to protect Greek antiquities from the invaders
When the Axis troops attacked Greece in late 1940, the Hellenic National Archaeological Museum in Athens was past the milestone 50th anniversary since its inauguration in 1889 – to which German archaeologists had also contributed through the work of the German Archaeological Institute in Athens (DAI) since 1874.
As everything changed after the invasion, so did the relationship between the two institutions, and on November 11, 1940, the Greek Ministry of Religious Affairs and Education issued an order for the protection of antiquities in various museums from aerial hazards.
Planning for emergency safeguarding operations had already started three years earlier, as the Greek state recognized war air raids as a potential threat to museum collections, the exhibition reveals. And now, the time had come to launch the “hiding operation” and protect the country’s valuable ancient artefacts.
Expert committees were formed with the participation of judges, engineers, technicians and archaeologists, and specific guidelines were issued for the essential yet delicate concealment works that took six months to complete.
Similar hiding operations took place elsewhere in Greece and Europe during World War II.
Hiding Greek antiquities across Athens
The first antiquities to be secured at the Hellenic National Archaeological Museum were those in the Mycenaean collection, with its exquisite golden artefacts from the tombs of the Mycenaean kings. Large-scale sculptures were buried in special trenches beneath the Museum’s floors, covered with sand and concrete, while metal artefacts, smaller sculptures, and pottery were hidden in the basement.
Dozens more crates were filled with antiquities and hidden in the Cave of Enneakrounos and the Prison of Socrates. Gold artefacts, together with the Museum’s catalogues that secured the state’s ownership rights on the antiquities, were locked up in the vaults of the Bank of Greece.
The hiding operations concluded shortly before Nazi troops entered Athens, on April 27, 1941. Besides Greek Museum officials, foreign archaeologists from Austria, the U.S., and Britain, aided the hiding operations.
During the Nazi occupation, the Greek authorities resisted pressure for the unearthing and re-display of the antiquities; the Germans argued that the prolonged concealment could harm the antiquities, but the Greeks only allowed the unearthing and reassessment of the condition of a few bronze artefacts. In December 1944, the hiding operation would also prove crucial for the preservation of the Museum’s antiquities, when the building’s roof was damaged by RAF bombardments at the outbreak of the Greek Civil War.
Although the Museum reopened in 1947, it wasn’t until 1964 that all the hidden antiquities were re-installed in its galleries.
Nazi excavations in Greece and the post-war confiscation of antiquities by the Greek state
Before World War II, researchers associated with the German Archaeological Institute in Athens (DAI) had been collecting Greek antiquities from excavations as well as from the local antiquities market, for research, in accordance with the private collections law.
During the Nazi occupation, the Germans continued to carry out excavations in Greece, some of them approved by the Occupation Greek government. Several finds were transported to Germany, and later repatriated to Greece post-war.
Upon Athens’ liberation in 1944, and while the Museum artefacts had effectively survived the Nazi occupation, an additional unprecedented operation for the protection of ancient Greek cultural heritage took place.
The Greek state confiscated a total of more than 1000 ancient objects from the DAI building in Athens and from the house of the former Director of the DAI. Despite the Institute’s reopening in 1951, the confiscated antiquities have remained in the vaults of the Hellenic National Archaeological Museum.
More than eight decades after World War II, with the scientific collaboration between the two institutes restored, a small selection of these antiquities were presented to the public for the first time on October 12, 2026.
Between 2021 and 2023, a project funded by Germany’s Federal Ministry of Education and Research, digitised the entire DAI Collection, comprising more than 35,000 objects. And in 2024, the joint research project titled “Divided Past: The Confiscation of the DAI Athens and the National Archaeological Museum” started to re-contextualise the antiquities and the archival material that surrounds them.
A selection of the antiquities from the DAI Athens collection, including inscriptions and a rare Attic white lekythos vessel, will be on display for visitors at the Hellenic National Archaeological Museum in Athens until January 31, 2027. A parallel exhibition is taking place at the DAI Athens until November 15.
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