Archaeological Museum

Living on Chios island for a while and being busy with today's problems, you can sometimes get lost in plain reality and forget about its majestic history and heritage. So, take your comfy shoes, 2 euro for a ticket and a notebook to make notes and let's go to the Archaeological Museum of Chios!

Well, you don't have to bother about moving out from your coach as we are going to tell you about it first. The Archaeological Museum it's one of the most important museums on the island. It displays exhibits, explanatory texts and maps providing visitors with information about the history of the island from Early Neolithic period down to Roman times.

It has three levels and a courtyard. On the first floor you can see exhibits from prehistoric Chios- mostly great variety of pottery and ornaments. Our favourite part were sculptures where we saw for example the statue of Nike dating from the 2nd c. AD found in Chios town,the statue of Dionysos and great sort of female busts from which the most we admired precision in depicting fanciful hairdos.

Second level's showcases contain pottery, metal objects, coins and magnificent glass works. The Archaic Chian pottery is really remarkable because of its typical brown or black-brown decoration painted on the background. In the other room you can find well preserved parts of bigger buildings, like basis of Ionic columns or pilaster bases formed into lion's paws. The third level is usually a temporary exhibition and an open- air display on the courtyard shows examples of statues, inscriptions and a reconstruction of the only Macedonian tomb on the Chios, found at Frangomachala in Chios town. The building of the museum is pretty modern as it got redesigned in 1999 and can work as a great shelter from the frying Chian sun as it's pleasantly cool and half-shadowed.

The museum works everyday beside Mondays from 8 to 3pm so if you crave for some ancient twist in your modern life- it's totally recommended.

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The Archeological Museum of Chios was constructed between 1966 and 1971 in an area of 2500 square meters. It comprises some exhibition rooms, which cover an area of 1200 square meters, storerooms, workshops and offices.

The structure is built of concrete and surrounded by stone retaining walls due to the inclination of the ground.The museum was closed down on May 18th, 1987, because the structure of the building was damaged due to the inclination of the ground. Today, a stone retaining wall surrounds the building and a project for "the drainage of the plot, the reinforcement of the retaining walls and repairs of the fence of the Museum of Chios" started in 1995 to fix the stability problems of the building before the 20th Ephorate. The workings were completed during 1998 and the museum was open to the public in November 1999.

The museum contains collections of prehistoric and archaic findings from excavations of the British School in Emborios, Neolithic findings of the British excavations in Agios Galas, Archaic and Classical findings from the British excavations in Fana and various findings from the salvage excavations conducted by the 20th Ephorate of Byzantine Antiquities in Chios. Also very interesting is the Letter of Alexander the Great to the Chians.

The Archaeological Museum of Chios was nominated for the 2001 European Museum of the Year Award within a group of 120 European museums and 39 selected nominees.

Address:

10 Michalon St., Chios 82100 (near the harbour).

Telephone (& fax):

+30 271 44239