Benaki Museum - Athens Campus

Athens Campus

The museum's primary home is in the Benakis' house opposite the National Garden on Queen Sofias Avenue and owes its existence to the generosity of Antonis Benakis, whose family lived in Alexandria, Egypt.

In 1931, the Benakis donated the family's house in Athens and their collection of more than 37,000 Islamic and Byzantine objects. More than 9,000 artefacts were added by the 1970s, which spurred donations from other sources. Benakis remained active in the museum until his death in 1954.

Under the directorship of Angelos Delivorrias, the museum added more than 60,000 objects, books and documents, some of which were purchased and others donated. Delivorrias opts to focus on displaying donated items in order to encourage public participation and strengthen the community's ties to the museum. The museum also focus on the fact that Greek history does not begin and end with specific events but rather exists along a continuum that continues today.

Parts of the museum's collections have travelled worldwide, including Canada in 2008, the United States in 1959 in partnership with the Smithsonian Institution and in 2005, an Ancient Greek solid gold drinking cup left Greece for the first time and traveled to the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney and the Melbourne Immigration Museum in Melbourne, Australia.