Athens Airport, Museum

Sphinx from Spatha (570-550 BCE)

Several years ago, a new airport was opened near Athens, the International Airport Eleftherios Venizelos, named after Greece’s leading statesman in the first half of the twentieth century. It has a small museum, which is quite interesting, as it documents the rural landscape east of Athens. You will find a beautiful model of a Neolithic settlement, but also finds from the Archaic, Classical, Hellenistic, Roman, and Byzantine ages. Nothing is really unique, but the objects are fine and they are well explained.

Next to it is a small exhibition on Eleftherios Venizelos; you can also see a movie about the new Acropolis Museum, both of which I found less interesting, but still preferred to passing the customs and spending time in the shopping mall.

Athens, National Archaeological Museum

The Zeus of Artemisium

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 Diadumenianus 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.

Greek Strikes

Kerameikos closed

Here in Greece, it is hard not to notice that the Greeks are angry at their government, which can only prevent a state bankruptcy by taking desperate measures. For example, people can no longer retire in their mid-fifties. They will have to work longer, even when they have a right to an early retirement. Or another case: many people working on the archaeological sites haven’t received their wages for twenty-two months. I do not know to what extent the situation is comparable to my own country, where I find some economic measures hard to swallow because the people who have gotten us into this mess have remained unpunished: the CEOs, the bankers, a couple of politicians, a handful of accountants, a lot of economists. To some extent, I can sympathize with the angry Greeks.

This morning, the inevitable happened: we found an archaeological site closed. Everyone at Kerameikos was on strike. I should probably count my blessings that this afternoon, they will reopen the museum and the excavation. Yet, strikes create victims – and it is a stupid to focus on foreigners. They won’t influence Greek public opinion for the strikers, but can influence foreign public opinion against Greece.

Targeting foreigners is not only stupid, it is also ungrateful. After all, to keep the euro stable, the other member states have had to offer loans to Greece, and this money must come from somewhere. This has added to the problems in northwestern Europe. My parents could benefit from a pension when they were sixty-five but I will probably not be able to retire before I am sixty-eight or sixty-nine, partly because of the Greek bail out. It has long been known that my generation has to pay for the babyboom and I have learned to live with it sometime in the late nineties, so it’s fine with me, but I think the Greeks cannot reasonably ask that they can retire at fifty-eight when this means that others have to work until they’re sixty-eight.

Athens, Byzantine Museum

A praying lady from Egypt

Some museums appeal to you because they are interesting, like Delphi. With some exceptions, its sculpture is not extremely remarkable, but the museum tells a good and important story about ancient religion. Something similar can be said about the museum of Dion: a thought-provoking cross-section of the type of art one might have seen in a small town in a Roman province. The collections of other museums appeal to your sense of beauty, like the Acropolis Museum. Or the Byzantine Museum in Athens.

You don’t have to be a Christian to appreciate that the icons and reliefs are fine-looking. There’s a splendid mosaic of the Mother of God, tenderly looking at her Child. There are gorgeous mosaics and sculptures from the Athenian churches of Late Antiquity, like the Parthenon. You will see nice coins and impressive manuscripts – a purple codex, a list of privileges from Monemvasia on the other end of a room, and a splendid gospel of John somewhere else. I loved the priestly garments from Egypt. Byzantine art induces some kind of serenity.

About interesting things, you can write something. To describe beauty, however, words are inadequate. It has always intrigued me that art historians start to explain art, catching a presumed meaning in language. But art is sublime and transcends spoken words. And whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent. Go to the Byzantine Museum, experience the works of art, and don’t try to explain what it means to you.

Athens, Acropolis Museum

Alexander (photo taken in the old museum...)

I had been looking forward to our visit to the Acropolis Museum, because I had read several very favorable reviews (like this one). It is indeed splendid. One of the reasons for building it is that Greece wants the Elgin Marbles back, and that the British Museum has often argued that the Greeks cannot really take care of antiquities. So, the Greeks decided to build the best museum in the world, and they’ve succeeded wonderfully. Unlike the old building, which was too small (another reason to build something else) the new Acropolis Museum, made from steel, concrete, and glass, is spacious and light.

More importantly, they have really thought about everything. It is built on top of an archaeological site, and the museum has on many places a glass floor, to make you realize that you’re literally standing on the past. Or take the entrance, where you will find several banks in a semicircle, where students can sit down (as if in a theater) and a teacher can explain something. There’s a photo of the Acropolis, a model, a bust of Pericles, a relief of a triere, some objects illustrating the democratic process. In this way, no one needs to enter the museum without knowing why fifth- and fourth-century Athens mattered and why this museum was built.

The first room is actually the gentle stairway to the first floor; to your left and right you see lots of Archaic and Classical pottery. For a moment, we were reminded of a storage room and the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, but in the end, the sheer amount of beautiful ceramics was not too much to stomach. Once upstairs, you’ve reached a giant room full of Archaic statues – the korai, the horsemen, the pediments, the gods, the heroes, and the “Kritios boy”. It was all destroyed by the Persians and stored away in large pits, forgotten, and found again by nineteenth-century archaeologists.

On the same level is the collection of Classical art, where you will find, among many other things, the famous frieze of the temple of Nike and lots of other sculpture. The most recent objects are Roman. For the Christian additions to the Parthenon you will have to go to the Byzantine Museum, which is just as nice as the Acropolis Museum. The Caryatides from the Erechtheion have received a special place, where you can see them from all sides. I had never realized that the girls have splendid hair.

Almost nowhere are the objects hidden behind glass. If you want to, you might touch the objects, but the museum trusts people to act responsibly, and I agree that we should have some confidence in people. Sometimes, there may be someone who touches something, but placing everything behind glass will destroy the visitors’ experience of all those beautiful statues. That’s like killing a statue, which I find worse than that someone occasionally touches it.

On the second floor – look through the glass floor to see the Caryatides from above! – is a restaurant with a splendid view of the Acropolis, plus a small bookshop. Moving up again, you reach the hall where the remains of the two pediments and the two friezes are displayed. The Greeks hope that one day, the Elgin Marbles will be here. Until then, you will see replicas with the optimistic explanatory sign “Cast (temporary)”.

The Akropolis Museum is beautiful. It is the best museum I know. It is a triumph. But triumphs are always bought at a price, and this museum is not perfect either. One lady in my company, who suffers from mild agoraphobia, started to feel sick in those spacious rooms, which was acerbated by the fact that it was warmer than is customary in a museum. I won’t blame the architect for creating an open building, but the climate system may indeed suffer from some children’s diseases. Another detail that can be improved easily is the sound of the (excellent!) movie that is shown on the third floor: it is too loud, so that people who are trying to see the two models of the pediments opposite the movie screen, are distracted. Finally, I found it odd that the museum hardly sold English books or a DVD of that movie.

Yet, these are trivialities. The only real criticism is that photography is forbidden – something that ought to be outlawed anyhow, but is particularly silly in a museum that stresses that the Parthenon is World Heritage. We should all be able to study it, we must all be able to take photos of the details we think are important – especially if you cannot even buy a catalog, which is a poor substitute anyhow, because the photographer never focuses on the details you find interesting. Museums must not obstruct study.

So, I will have to go back to study everything again. But going back there is something pleasant. The Akropolis Museum is beautiful. It is the best museum I know. It is a triumph.

The Dutch Tourist Dilemma

Only people without historical knowledge will buy it

I’ve been in Athens now for two days and I have twice been forced to leave my bed at 6.30 – which is pretty hard for someone suffering from DSPS – because I wanted to visit the Acropolis and the Acropolis Museum. You need to be there very early, preferably when they’re opening, and with a reservation; it is the only way to actually see something. Even then, you will enjoy it for only an hour, because at nine, large groups of tourists start to arrive from the cruise ships in the port. Like cattle, they are driven along the sights, and to be honest: they don’t seem to understand the things any better than a cow would do.

It’s not just the Acropolis Museum. I’ve not blogged about the Agora Museum because I found it too crowded to enjoy. In Delphi, the well-meaning visitor will face the same problem after eleven o’clock, when the groups from Athens arrive. Fortunately, after four o’clock the shrine of Apollo is quiet, almost serene. I have beautiful memories of sitting near the temple, watching the sun go down, completely alone, except for one guard and dozens of birds.

What to do with tourists who are visiting a place because they’re expected to do something, but have not the faintest idea about what they are seeing, and are spoiling it for people who have prepared themselves? I once read an article in La Repubblica, in which this was called the Dutch Tourist Dilemma. Florence suffers from many Dutch tourists, people who at the end of the year decide to use the last free kilometers of their company’s car to go on a holiday and chose Tuscany because you can reach it in one day. They cannot distinguish a Botticelli from a Boccaccino, and make it difficult for those who do know the difference to understand it.

The author of the article did not know what was the solution. On the one hand, museums are within their rights to send away people when they make it impossible for other visitors to enjoy the works of art; on the other hand, even barbarians might learn a thing or two if they’re allowed to enter the museums. I don’t know the way out either, but I feel increasingly dissatisfied with modern museums. They do anything to attract visitors, and the people who do most to prepare themselves and study them, are forced to accept Vatican-like situations. Doing nothing is no longer an option.

Athens, Numismatic Museum

Athenian drachm

Dimitris Chatzis’ To diplo biblio (“the double book”) is one of my favorite novels, and because I recently met a German-born Greek who hadn’t heard of this story about Greeks in Greece and Germany, I decided to buy the modern classic. (Here‘s a chapter.) It turned out to be a fool’s errant. This afternoon, I visited seven bookshops where everyone agreed that it was one of the best Greek novels and everyone was surprised to find it out of print. If this wasn’t depressing enough, I was in one of the ugliest parts of Athens, Panepistemiou Street, disgraced by several neoclassicist university buildings that would have ruined my day even if I had been able to buy my book.

One of the less tasteless buildings is the former house of Heinrich Schliemann: designed by Ernst Ziller and called Iliou Melathron by its owner, it now hosts Athens’ Numismatic Museum. The great archaeologist may have wanted to build a “house of Troy”, but it looks more like a Palladio villa than a Neohellenistic building. The decoration is well-preserved and the paintings are not bad, for the nineteenth century. This alone would justify a visit.

The collection is splendid. You will see hundreds of Greek coins, most of them ancient, but on the second floor, there is an exceptionally fine collection of Byzantine coins, and there are more modern examples too. In the first room, you will find some information on the origin of the house, and in two double displays, you will see Schliemann’s own coins. It makes you realize what an advance numismatics have made in just a bit more than a century.

In the next rooms, you get information about the origin of coinage – I especially loved the six bronze spits (obols!) from the Heraion near Argos. The coins themselves are presented by category: flowers, animals, mythology, statues, buildings, and so on. You will also get information about the way coins were produced, about inflation, or about hoards (beautifully displayed). Of course there are also various displays that show the regional variation: coins from the Greek city states, from Asia Minor, from Magna Graecia.

As I said, the more recent coins are on the second floor. You will also find medals and seals. I was impressed by the seal of the Venetian doge Dandolo, the half-blind man who more or less singlehandedly put an end to the Byzantine Empire.

Photography is allowed, but I discovered that taking too many photos is frowned upon. The guards remained friendly, I hasten to add, but I must confess that I always find it a bit frustrating if photography is made difficult. Museums should allow and not obstruct study, which means that visitors must be able to see the objects again at home. Besides, the best PR a museum can have is visitors enthusiastically telling other people that a museum shows interesting objects and illustrating this with pictures. (In the Bode Museum and the British Museum, which have similar numismatic collections, photography is easier.)

This being said, I conclude that I found the museum very nice and recommend it. Unlike the crowded Agora Museum, which I had visited earlier today, it is perfectly quiet. Again, I am grateful to the Greek government, which spends lots of money to splendid museums. The catalog, Coins and Numismatics (1996) is beautiful and very reasonably priced (€36). All in all, Athens’ Numismatic Museum is certainly worth a visit.

Rose-fingered Dawn

View from my hotel at Cenchreae (24 October 2010)

Isthmia, Archaeological Museum

Sima from the archaic Temple

The shrine of Poseidon at the Isthmus of Corinth, called Isthmia, must have been one of the most important sanctuaries in ancient Greece. Yet, no one knew where it was until it was discovered by Oscar Broneer in 1952. The reason why it had been lost for so many centuries, was that the temple had been dismantled during the reign of Justinian, who built a long wall, the “hexamilion” across the Isthmus and needed building materials.

On two earlier occasions, I tried to visit the place, but both times, I found it closed. Today, I was more successful. On the excavation site, you will see the foundations of the temple, a theater, a Roman bath house, a part of the hexamilion wall, a sanctuary (the “palaimonion”) and the remains of the starting gate of the old stadium. There’s another stadium, outside the archaeological park, a bit to the southeast.

The museum consists of just one, large room. There are several spectacular finds, like a large part of the cult statue of Poseidon and Amphitrite, splendid glass mosaics found in Cenchreae, catapult projectiles from the Roman attack in 198 BCE, and remains from the archaic and classical temples. The light is terrible and it is sometimes difficult to see what’s in the displays; on the other hand, the explanatory signs are perfect. All in all, this museum was worth waiting for.

Corinth, Archaeological Museum

Three menorahs

Corinth was one of the most important cities in the Archaic period. It was the mother-city of, for example, Corcyra (Corfu) and Syracuse, which means that it played an important role in the Greek expansion to the west. The ancient poets called it “rich in silver”, and if you look at the ancient temple of Apollo, you understand that it must have been a very wealthy city indeed. Yet, it was eclipsed by Athens and although it seemed to recover in the third century BCE, it was eventually sacked by the Romans, in 146 BCE. For a century, there was nothing left, but then, Julius Caesar refounded the city. It now became the capital of the province of Achaea, and the archaeological remains are splendid.

Yet, the museum of what was one of the most important cities of Antiquity is a bit of a disappointment. This might have been something like the museums of Philippi, Thessaloniki, or Dion, which were also Roman cities; yes, it might even have been bigger, because there is also the archaic age. But the institute seems not to have benefitted from Greece’s recent investments in its archaeological museums. It is so old-fashioned that on some places, the explanatory signs have faded out.

That does not mean that it is a bad museum. On the contrary. The first room is devoted to the Mycenaean presence and has some splendid objects. The opposite room is devoted to the archaic age and contains some nice pottery. I was impressed by two six-century sphinxes, which once adorned a tomb.

Octavia

The third room is devoted to Classical, Hellenistic and Roman art. Here, you will see splendid statues of the Julio-Claudian emperors, including an unshaved Julius Caesar; some nice pottery; mosaics (including a perfectly preserved Dionysiac one); and several fine statues. I loved the small Hellenistic statuettes of actors, one of them apparently playing _Miles gloriosus_. In a corridor you will see many reliefs from the theater: an Amazonomachy, Labors of Heracles, and a Gigantomachy. There’s also an inscription that commemorates that a Roman fleet, commanded by the grandfather of Marc Antony, crossed the Isthmus (name erased). At the end of the gallery is a tombstone of a legionary: the only one I’ve seen in Greece this week. This is not surprising, of course: the legions were on the frontier, not in the inner core of provinces.

The final room contains some Christian art.

The museum is next to the entrance of the site. At the exit are several restaurants; one of them uses the slogan that it has served “drinks since the age of Socrates” – just as infelicitous as “Odysseus Travel”, “Icarus Air”, and “Restaurant Saint Simeon”.

Delphi, Museum

Cleobis and Biton

Imagine a group of elderly tourists, some of them walking with sticks. Early in the morning. Their Greek tour leader brings them to an excavation and starts to buy tickets. He asks for the discount that is normally granted to the elderly. The guard looks at the gray haired people. It is impossible not to realize that all of them have passed their sixty-fifth birthday long ago. Still, the guard demands to see their passports – which they have of course left in the hotel because the hotel owner has warned them of pickpockets.

Or take an incident I witnessed in 2007. Someone is taking a photo in the museum and by accident uses the flash on his camera. A guard starts to shout at him and insists that the tourist formats the entire memory card.

This is Delphi.

This is the place where old people have to prove they are old. This is the place where forgetting to switch off your flash means that you lose all your photos, even the ones you took two weeks ago on the Athenian Agora and the ones you took in Corinth or Olympia. In Delphi, they train the guards to be as rude as possible.

And yet, every time I am in Greece, I visit this site. There are many reasons why. Because it is the most beautiful place in the world, to start with. Because the museum has one of the most interesting collections of ancient Greek art. Because this collection is also very well displayed. Unlike in western Europe, where museums often show objects in poorly lit rooms in which it all looks very mysteriously but you can’t see a thing, the rooms in the Delphi Museum are bright and it is easy to study the objects. Greece has the best museums in the world, and in Greece, Delphi is one of the very best. No doubt about it.

Sculpture from the Massiliote Treasury

Here you can see small Mycenaean objects, bronze cauldrons, the sculpture of the treasuries of the Siphnians, Athenians, and Massiliots, a splendid Cleobis and Biton, a cow made of silver plate, beautiful face masks with golden decorations, the archaic pediments of the temple of Apollo (with an impressive Dionysus), the monument of Aemilius Paullus, and the famous charioteer.

Delphi… You can only like the place. Except for the guards. During the afternoon, I saw that group of elderly again, in the museum. At one point, they burst out laughing about something their guide said. They were clearly enjoying their visit and because they were – except for me – the only ones in the room, no one was disturbed. Still, the guard shouted that they had to be quiet, easily producing more decibels than the laughing people.

The most beautiful place on earth will always attract visitors, so there’s absolutely no reason to remain polite to them. If the Delphian authorities replace the guards with Dobermanns, no one will notice, except of course that dogs can be kind.

Fifty Museums

Dog charging a hare (urn from Mende; Archaeological Museum of Thessaloniki)

Regular readers of this little blog will have noticed that I often put online brief articles about the museums I sometimes visit. Today, I made available the fiftieth part  of the series, and there’s still a lot to add. After all, there are many small museums, and those are the nicest ones, because over there that small dish, that headless statue, and that insignifcant urn suddenly catch your attention, while they would be lost among the great works of art in the larger museums. So, my list will continue to expand. If you haven’t noticed it before: it’s here, and tomorrow, there will be a special edition.

Chaeronea, Archaeological Museum

A relief with a trophee

The archaeological museum of Chaeronea is next to the lion that commemorates the Thebans who in 338 BCE fell in the battle against Philip of Macedon. The battlefield itself is to the east of the modern town; you can still recognize the tumulus where the Macedonian soldiers were buried. In the central hall of the museum, you will see several objects that commemorate the epic fight, like the spearheads of the Macedonian hoplites. In another display, you will see the objects that were given to the dead Thebans: many of them were buried with a strigil.

In this room are also the remains of a monument erected by Sulla, after he had defeated the army of Pontus during the First Mithridatic War. The names of two ancient heroes are recorded, just as Plutarch writes about this monument. The museum has two other rooms. To your left, you will find the prehistoric finds from the Mycenean sites near Lake Copais; to your right, finds from ancient Chaeronea, Orchomenos, and Lebadeia. I loved the subtle Tanagra figurines.

In the garden, you will find several inscriptions. There’s an interesting damnatio memoriae of the name of what appears to have been Severus Alexander, but also the relief on the photo: a trophee, crowned by two Nikes, and two POWs with trousers – perhaps Parthians. I’d love to know more about it.

To be honest, this small museum is not worth a detour, but if you pass through Chaeronea, you should spend an hour over there.

Almyros, Archaeological Museum

Eros on a mirror

In the late 1980’s, I was working at the excavation of Hellenistic Halos, a heavily fortified port in southeastern Thessaly. Although I soon discovered that I lacked the qualities to be a good archaeologist, I usually enjoyed my work and the contact with the Greek people we met. For a couple of years I continued to exchange letters with a young girl who liked to improve her English. It was a good experience and I have returned to the place several times.

Whenever I went there, I found the place where the finds were kept, the small museum of Almyros, closed. During my two first visits, this was only to be expected, because the building had been destroyed by an earthquake. All carefully repaired objects had been damaged for a second time. But when I returned again, the new building was not open either. This happened several times: I passed through Almyros late in the afternoon, or on a Monday (when Greek museums are usually closed), or on a national holiday… Whatever the cause, I never saw the objects that I was longing to see.

This year, I finally saw what I had wanted to see for more than twenty years. Although the doors were closed, the fence was open, and we soon found the guard, who helped us. I had not expected to be lucky this time, because closing this small museum for good would make sense in a country that suffers heavily from the current economic crisis. It tells a lot about the love of modern Greeks for their past that they keep even the smallest museums open. I am very grateful.

A coin and its excavator

The little museum has three rooms: one dedicated to the prehistory of southeastern Thessaly, one dedicated to Phthiotic Thebes, one dedicated to Hellenistic Halos. In the garden are some other finds, including a splendid Ottoman tombstone. Explanatory signs are very well executed, and if you want to know more, there’s a library.

I did not recognize any of the objects on display. Except for one coin. After more than twenty years, it is impossible to be certain, but this morning, I’d have sworn an oath that one of the coins in the museum was recovered from the soil by myself. Of course I am fooling myself in believing this, but at least it’s a nice thought that my clumsy activities have not been completely without merit. Happy, I said goodbye to the guard, walked to the central square of Almyros, and ordered a coffee in one of the bars I once used to visit.

Dion, Archaeological Park and Museum

The temple of Isis

The Archaeological Park of Dion is what the name suggests it is: a park, indeed, with ruins. I visited the place for the first time in 1991, and only remembered that I had been impressed. Today, I returned, and found it to be not only extremely interesting, but also one of the loveliest places I have ever been. It is bizarre that I have no memories of my first visit.

What makes it special is that it is very green – a park, like I said, where you will often find yourself in the shade. Among the ruins are the city walls, a small odeon, a bathhouse with some good mosaics, a fine church, several luxurious mansions, latrines, temples to various deities, two theaters, and the altar of Zeus Olympius, for which the city was once famous. With the possible exception of the temple of Isis, none of it is unique, but the lofty vegetation and the river Baphyras make it a very special site.

One of the excellent explanatory signs

But it’s not just the trees that make a visit a delight. There are small fountains with water that, odd though this may seem, tastes really delicious – better than Greece’s mineral waters. Walking around is very easy, because there are excellent explanatory signs. There is always a map of the entire complex, there are photos of the objects found in this building, and there is often a map or a drawing of what it once must have looked like. The bottom of the sign always indicates the distance and direction to the next monuments. The description itself, in two languages, is excellent. You really feel taken seriously.

You will need more than half a day to study it all, but the small bar in the entrance building offers good coffee. The museum is a few minutes away and is, again, good. You will see a lot of sculpture. The only really beautiful one is an Artemis from a sanctuary at the mouth of the Baphyras, but that does not mean that the other statues are uninteresting. Their lack of quality illustrates that Dion was a provincial town that could not afford the best sculptors. There are also several tomb finds and inscriptions. Except for a water organ, nothing is unique, but the museum is fine. The archaeological institute, across the street, displays some objects that have not been registered yet.

Dion is in Greece, far away from my own country. In the mid-fourth century, its bishop attended the Synod of Serdicca, where he must have met Servatius, the bishop of Tongeren and Maastricht – cities in what are now Belgium and the Netherlands. When I realized this, I briefly understood what it meant to be a citizen of the Roman Empire. Of course, we’re all theoretically aware that back then a large territory was ruled by one government, but you only know what that means when you’re standing underneath an unDutch sun, looking at the ruin of an ancient church, and realize that the believers belonged to the same state as your ancestors.

All in all, I think that I am not exaggerating when I say that, after Athens, Delphi, Corinth, Messene, and Olympia, Dion is one of Greece’s top sites – you just must visit it.

Philippi, Museum

Tyche

I had been in Philippi before, but until today, I had not heard of a museum. Not surprising: it has been closed for about eight years, and when it was built, a new basilica was discovered. (If I’ve counted correctly, that’s the fifth church in the city where Saint Paul lived for some time.) The museum was reopened only recently, and some explanatory signs are still missing.

The collection is not very large, but there are some splendid pieces, like the relief of a dancing maenad from the theater, a superb Tyche, a number of inscriptions, a bust of Antoninus Pius, a gold wreath and several other objects from a tomb, a skeleton, and so on. On the upper floor is a collection of Christian art.

I also liked the building itself: very light, without unnecessary ornaments – functional. I was reminded of New Objectivity, which is the only architectural style I really like.

In the garden of the museum, from which you have a good view of the battlefield, are many inscriptions, including several that are not included in the digital database of Clauss/Slaby.

Thessaloniki, Archaeological Museum

Septimius Severus

The Archaeological Museum in Thessaloniki and its twin, the Byzantine Museum, are among the finest museums in the world. It is easy to spend a day over there, and fortunately, these quiet museums are open until eight o’ clock in the evening. They are certainly worth a detour – in fact, Thessaloniki and towns like Pella, Vergina, Amphipolis, and Philippi are sufficiently interesting to be the object of a complete holiday.

The Archaeological Museum consists of four parts. In the first place, there is the collection of ‘normal’ objects: several rooms full of sculpture and mosaics from Thessaloniki and one wing illustrating daily life in ancient Macedonia. If this was all there was to be seen, you would greatly enjoy it. I personally love the bust of Septimius Severus, but there are also several interesting inscriptions. The statues that were once known as Las Incantadas (“the enchanted ladies”) and are now in the Louvre, are shown as large drawings: you won’t miss a thing.

But there’s more. The second part of the museum contains the finds from the Macedonian tombs – and that means a lot of gold. The most famous piece is a large vessel from Derveni, but there are also finds from Pydna, Katerini, Sindos, Stavroupolis, and so on. And of course you will find the Derveni papyrus. You can discern the letters, but reading it is next to impossible.

The third part is in the basement, where you will find an exhibition of Macedonia’s prehistory, including some very ancient skulls. Next to it are many splendid objects of glass, together with explanation of what glass actually is, how it is made, and so on. I would have liked to spend some more time over here. Finally, the fourth part is the garden, where you will find dozens of sarcophaguses, with good explanations of the sometimes barely legible inscriptions. There are interesting comments, and you must certainly go there.

When you’re exhausted, you’ll like the museum of Byzantine art, which has a quiet restaurant. I enjoyed a good salad and nice wine; the people with me enjoyed their lunch too. The museum itself covers Late Antiquity, including trade and crafts, and religious art of the Middle Ages and more recent times. It was certainly interesting to see objects from Philippi and the oldest building phases of the churches of Thessaloniki, but the part I liked best is the medieval art. You will see nice not only icons of saints, but also old tomb paintings, and the seals of men like the patriarch Photius. The beauty of Byzantine art, like Gregorian chants, always strikes me as sublime – and I am always looking for words to express why I enjoy it so much.

Pella, Archaeological Museum

Figurine of a Greek lady

The museum of Pella used to be a small building, across the street from the excavations. Recently, however, the collection has been transferred to a spacious new building in a completely different part of the ancient capital of Macedonia. It has two floors, but the upper floor is still empty, waiting for new finds.

There are several large rooms. A long corridor with a large map of the conquests of Alexander leads to a bust of the great conqueror, which is where the museum really opens itself to its visitors. The first room contains no finds (except for two roof tiles), but offers a small model of ancient Pella, together with maps that explain the history of Macedonia. After this, there’s another corridor – here is the statue of Alexander as Pan – and you will reach the main hall. Here you will find the famous mosaics of the lion hunt and the Dionysus seated on a panther. Photography is permitted. However, the friendly guards are anxious to prevent you from taking photos in the other rooms, where you will find many objects from Pella’s daily life.

The site of the excavation has been expanded to the south. The site used to consist of the agora and a couple of houses, but now, you can recognize several blocks of houses and several streets. The fact that the new museum is close to the citadel suggests that there are also plans to finally open it for the public.

I enjoyed my visit to this museum, which was opened only a month ago, but I just don’t understand why we weren’t allowed to take photos in parts of the museum. The objects are there for study, and because we cannot visit Pella every day, we must be able to take photos. Museums that prevent study, have something to explain.

1600 Ancient Sites on Google Earth

The center of Alexandria

What you are looking for, is here.

SMS from Turkey

Tarkasnawa of Mira

In 2003, Marco and I rented a car and made a trip through Turkey. As always, we didn’t have time to visit the most important sites (I still haven’t been in Perge or Pergamon), because we lost way too much time on silly trivialities like finding the rock relief of king Tarkasnawa of the Hittite vassal kingdom Mira. It is not terribly important, but it’s mentioned by Herodotus, who believed it to be an Egyptian relief (more…). I think we spent about two hours, searching in vain, before we decided to give up. At that very moment, we spotted the small stairs along the road that indicated the place where we ought to climb to the rock. I will never forget the shout of Marco, who was the first to go up, that he saw the object of our quest.

I most have told this story several times, not ignoring our futile attempt to ask a Turkish woodcutter, who spoke only Turkish, whether he knew the relief. Apparently, my stories must have made some friends curious, because the other day, I received an SMS from two friends who were, at that moment, standing next to Tarkasnawa, and knew they would cause me great joy by letting me know where they were standing.

More here; satellite photo here.