Byzantine and Christian Museum, Athens

The Byzantine and Christian Museum occupies Villa Ilissia, the elegant mansion designed by Stamatios Kleanthis. This building dates from 1848, while the museum itself began in 1914. Inside, its collection brings together more than 25,000 objects, including icons, manuscripts, frescoes, pottery, textiles, scriptures, and reproductions of artefacts.

The material spans from the 3rd century AD to the Late Middle Ages, giving you a compact view of Byzantine and later Christian culture through both devotional art and everyday craft. The museum reopened to visitors in June 2004 after a major refurbishment that also produced an additional wing. Its story therefore combines a nineteenth-century villa with a major public collection devoted to Greece’s Byzantine and post-Byzantine heritage.