Tickets to see Athens' Museums

National Archaeological Museum

The National Archaeological Museum (NAM) occupies a neoclassical block at 28is Oktovriou 44 in Exarcheia, a 5 to 7 minute walk from Victoria on Metro Line 1 and a short walk from Omonia. The collection holds more than 11,000 exhibits across over 8,000 square metres of permanent galleries, anchored by the Mycenaean Treasures gallery and the gold Mask of Agamemnon recovered by Heinrich Schliemann at Mycenae in 1876.

The Antikythera Mechanism, a bronze geared device for astronomical prediction dating to the 2nd century BC, sits alongside the Artemision Bronze, the Jockey of Artemision, the Akrotiri frescoes from the Bronze-Age settlement on Santorini, and the Archaic Kouroi including the Kouros of Sounion.

Benaki Museum of Greek Culture

The Benaki Museum of Greek Culture occupies the family home of Antonis Benakis at Koumbari 1 and Vasilissis Sofias in Kolonaki, opposite the National Garden and the Hellenic Parliament, with Syntagma and Evangelismos metro stations both within walking distance.

The permanent display covers Greek culture from prehistory to the 20th century across roughly 36 galleries on four floors. It groups prehistoric, ancient Greek and Roman antiquities; Byzantine and post-Byzantine icons and ecclesiastical works; the heirlooms collection of costumes and household objects of post-Byzantine and modern Greek life; and the Modern Greece galleries 33 to 36 on the third floor, which cover the Greek Revolution through to the Second World War.

Photo: "Benaki Museum, Athens - Joy of Museums - 2" by Joyofmuseums.

Museum of Cycladic Art

The Museum of Cycladic Art holds the Nicholas P. Goulandris Foundation collection of more than 350 Cycladic marble figurines dating from roughly 3200 to 2000 BC, ranging from the canonical folded-arm figures to large monumental pieces that together form one of the most complete privately assembled Cycladic groups in the world.

Floor 2 covers ancient Greek art from the Geometric through the Classical period, including the 4th-century marble grave relief known as the "Handshake", and the renovated third floor presents the museum's Cypriot antiquities.

Photo: "Goulandris Museum of Cycladic Art, Athens - Joy of Museums" by Joyofmuseums.

Byzantine and Christian Museum

The Byzantine and Christian Museum occupies Villa Ilissia at 22 Vasilissis Sofias, a neoclassical complex built in 1848 by Stamatios Kleanthes for Sophie de Marbois-Lebrun, Duchess of Plaisance, and converted to museum use in 1930. Roughly 25,000 to 30,000 objects covering the 3rd to 20th centuries AD form one of the world's most important Byzantine collections.

Cretan-school icons, ecclesiastical textiles, jewellery, sculptures, ceramics, wall paintings and mosaics fill the galleries. The reopened Loverdos Museum annex at 6 Mavromichali Street belongs to the same complex and admits visitors free.

Photo: "Byzantine and Christian Museum (Athens)" by Sailko.

National Museum of Contemporary Art (EMST)

EMST inhabits the former Fix brewery on Kallirrois Avenue and Amvrosiou Frantzi Street, a 1960s Greek-modernist building by architect Takis Zenetos rebuilt in 2009, five minutes' walk from Syngrou-Fix on Metro Line 2 and about 300 metres from the Fix tram stop.

The permanent collection covers contemporary Greek and international art from the late 20th century onward, with Jannis Kounellis, Chryssa, Costas Tsoclis, Stephen Antonakos and Kendell Geers among the represented artists. CINEFIX, the rooftop open-air cinema with views of the Acropolis, runs from May through September.

Photo: "View of the center of Athens, Greece, on Friday, November 5, 2021" by Jeanhousen.

National Gallery

The National Gallery (Alexandros Soutsos Museum) reopened in May 2021 after an expansion that doubled its footprint to 20,760 square metres, adding a 240-seat auditorium, a two-storey art library, an outdoor sculpture garden and a café. The collection of more than 15,000 works is the most comprehensive holding of modern Greek art anywhere.

The permanent display arranges roughly a thousand works through sections that cover post-Byzantine and Cretan-school painting, the El Greco room, the School of the Ionian Islands, painting of the independent Greek state from 1832 to 1862, the bourgeois painters of 1862 to 1900, the artists of the turn of the century, and the path toward a Greek modernism.

Photo: "National Art Gallery building in Athens" by Leeturtle.