The visitors centre of the National Observatory of Athens will be conducting evening tours in English on dates throughout August and September offering the public the opportunity to peer through the 8 metre dome of the Doridis telescope, to enjoy the Athenian sky from the Hill of the Nymphs, opposite the Acropolis.

Tours will be conducted in English in August and September starting at 9:00pm at a cost of 5 euros per person on the following dates:

August 1, 3, 4, 11, 24, 25, 29, and 31.

September every Wednesday, Friday and Saturday nights.

Originally posted on WhyAthens.com

The huge success of the kids’ contest continues and takes a new form!

Through our new digital platform, we discover ways to create, find information and gain knowledge that introduces us to the universe of History and Art.

On the occasion of the exhibition “Antiquarianism and Philhellenism. The Thanassis and Marina Martinos Collection” at the Museum of Cycladic Art, we invite children, ages 4 to 15, to bring their own “Everyday Heroes” to life!

Through paintings, sculptures and other artworks, we search for information and learn about the Heroes of that period, and connect them to their contemporary counterparts.

Who are your own Everyday Heroes, and what makes them stand out? We see them all around us, we imagine and draw them, making them even more unique!

 

Register HERE!

Just like every May, this year's top cultural event, the Athens Street Food Festival is returning to Athens!

For nine days (May 10-11-12, May 17-18-19 and May 24-25-26) the Old Depot of OSY in Gazi will become the meeting point for foodies, families, friends, tourists, and all those who wish to taste new street flavors from every corner of the world.

Athens Street Food Festival started back in 2016 with the aim of making the Athenian public aware of street food culture. The public's reaction was so overwhelming that the concept of "street food" rapidly spread to become the ultimate gastronomic trend in the country!

With more than 250,000 visitors in total, Athens Street Food Festival is the largest food festival in Greece, a real institution for the gastronomy of the country. 

In this year's fourth edition, the "recipe" remains the same with love for food, careful selection of participants from all over Greece, new ideas and a wide variety of flavors.

On January 7, the curtain is drawn on this year’s SNFCC Christmas World with a vibrant event marking a hopeful attitude for the new year ahead. At the heart of the SNFCC, the Agora, the King of Rock & Roll comes to life for one night only, and everyone is invited to join in this open party. 

No other pop culture persona has been as timelessly fascinating and as captivatingly charming as Elvis Presley — case in point: there are currently approximately 100,000 official impersonators of him in the US alone.

During his lifetime, Elvis stirred up teenage consciences, overturned social norms and shot down musical conventions. At the same time, he turned himself into a unique embodiment of the American Dream: he was innovative and, at the same time, inordinate in absolutely everything he did. And this is the reason why one generation of music lovers after another keeps on discovering his musical legacy with the same warmth and longing.

SNFCC’s tribute to Elvis Presley brings together musicians from the three most “thoroughbred” Athenian rock & roll bands, D.K. & The Band, Jitterbugs and HiRollers, in a delightful evening covering Elvis’s entire discography, from “That’s All Right” and “Mystery Train” to “Heartbreak Hotel” and “Blue Suede Shoes,” and from “Hound Dog” and “Jailhouse Rock” to “It’s Now Οr Never,” “A Little Less Conversation” and “Suspicious Minds.” 

Every Friday, the Restaurant on the second floor is open until 12 midnight offering special gourmet choices and beautiful night views of the Acropolis. The Restaurant renews its menu with seasonal dishes, using the finest products from every region of Greece, prepared in traditional methods.

Other than the special dishes based on traditional recipes, every Friday night the Acropolis Museum restaurant presents famous jazz music ensembles (musicians include Spyros Rontogiannis, George Tsiropoulos, George Mikros, Arionas Gyftakis and Christos Koromilas). Like every Friday, the restaurant is open until 12 midnight, offering a dinner menu from 8 p.m. onwards. 

For reservations, please contact the restaurant during Museum opening hours on +30 210 9000915. Visitors not wishing to dine at the restaurant are welcomed for a cold dish or dessert in a special restaurant area without reservation.

The Acropolis Museum started in 2015 a series of temporary exhibitions displaying important ancient artifacts, deriving from significant archaeological sites of the Greek periphery. The Museum’s goal is to present unusual subjects that will intrigue the current visitor and at the same time urge him to visit the places the exhibits originated from.The Acropolis Museum started in 2015 a series of temporary exhibitions displaying important ancient artifacts, deriving from significant archaeological sites of the Greek periphery.

The Museum’s goal is to present unusual subjects that will intrigue the current visitor and at the same time urge him to visit the places the exhibits originated from.

After “Samothrace. The mysteries of the great gods” and “Dodona. The oracle of sounds”, the third exhibition of the series concerns Eleusis and the great mysteries. Eleusis (Greek: Elefsina) is a town and municipality in West Attica, Greece. It is situated about 18 kilometres (11 miles) northwest from the centre of Athens. It is located in the Thriasian Plain, at the northernmost end of the Saronic Gulf.

The exhibition presents the most important artifacts brought to light by the archaeological excavation in Eleusis, such as the unique statue of the “Fleeing Persephone” (around 480 BC), the votive relief depicting Demeter and Kore (Persephone)(470-450 BC) and ceremonial vessels, such as kernos, plemochoe and thymiaterion, as well as monuments depicting the leading figures of the great mysteries, Hierophant and Dadouchos.

The exhibition includes archaeological findings from the Athenian Eleusinion and the Sacred Way, as the religious procession started from Athens with a host of Initiates and candidates for initiation and ended up in the Eleusis Telesterion. For this reason, a votive relief from the area of Eleusinion and distinctive findings from the Sanctuary of Aphrodite, which is located next to the Sacred Way at the area of Daphne, are on display before the entrance to the exhibition.

The exhibition gallery has the form of the Eleusinian Telesterion including a small-scale version of the dark Anaktoron where visitors can watch a 15-minute video presentation with aerial photographs of the Sacred Way, representations, models, the archaeological site of Eleusis and many emblematic exhibits.

The exhibition is conducted with the collaboration of the Acropolis Museum and the Ephorate of Antiquities of West Attica. The exhibits are on a loan from the Archaeological Museum of Eleusis and the National Archaeological Museum.

A total of 93 free-entry events in 115 archaeological sites, monuments and museums all over the country are organized by the Ministry of Culture and Sports for the full moon of August, which this year takes place on the 7^th of August!

In addition, 22 venues and museums will remain open to the public without  specific events being held. 

At the Central Archaeological Council meeting, all members  gave the "green light" for events that include music, dance, theater and visual exhibitions as film screenings, poetry nights, guided tours and many other actions.

Last year's statistics showed that 63,795 people participated in 82 events  that were held in 116 archaeological sites, museums and monuments or visited  34 sites that were just open to the public.

This year's events will culminate on August 7^th, but there will be more around this date. As for Athens and Attica, that evening the Acropolis will remain open until 8 pm and Sounio until midnight.

Musical events will be held, among other things, in the archaeological site of Olympiou, with the Philharmonic of the Army General Staff (20.00-22.00), as well as in the adjacent area of ​​the Archaeological Museum of Piraeus ("Melodies in the Full Moon" with the soprano Vasia Zacharopoulou, Dimitris Paksoglou and The Underground Youth Orchestra, at 21.00).

The Acropolis Museum will celebrate the August full moon on two separate nights. On Thursday August 18 at 9 pm, the museum will host the well-known band The Swingin’ Cats.

Furthermore, the museum galleries will remain open from 8:00 am to midnight (entrance will be free after 8:00 pm), allowing visitors to look through the permanent and temporary exhibitions. At the same time, the restaurant, located on the museum’s second floor, will also be open to the public. Visitors will be able to taste exquisite dishes based on traditional recipes, while listening to jazz music.

Acropolis Museum – Free entry to museum from 8:00pm – 12:00am

The Acropolis Museum invites its visitors to a musical performance by the well-known musician and singer Manolis Mitsias and his band who will perform popular melodies by Greek songwriters and composers including, Manos Hadjidakis, Mikis Theodorakis, Stavros Xarchakos, Thanos Mikroutsikos, Loukianos Kilaidonis, Christos Leontis and Dimos Moutsis. Performance from 9:00pm. Museum opens 8:00am.

National Archaeological Museum – open until midnight

A musical performance in the garden of the museum, 9:30pm – 11:00pm.

Numismatic Museum

A musical performance by quartet – “Quarderinas Moonlight Stories”, 9:00pm – 12:00am.

Source: WhyAthens.com

11 European partners with the same goal: to support up-and-coming media artists in order to create new works.

The OCC continues to support artistic practices positioned between art, science and technology through its participation, along with ten other partners, in The European Media Art Platform - EMAP which provides up-and-coming media artists working in the visual arts, design, film, music and sound with the chance to participate in residencies and to create new works to be presented at festivals and other events in partner-countries.

The platform's members are: Werkleitz Centre for Media Art (Germany), Onassis Cultural Centre (Greece), Ars Electronica Center (Austria), Bandits Mages (France), Foundation for Art & Creative Technology / FACT (UK), IMPAKT (Netherlands), Kontejner (Croatia), LaBoral Centro de Arte y Creación Indstrial (Spain), M-Cult (Finland), RIXC (Lithuania), WRO Center for Media Art Foundation (Poland)

The National Archaeological Museum in collaboration with the Italian Archaeological School at Athens organize the temporary exhibition "Hadrian and Athens. Conversing with an Ideal World" in the Gallery 31a of the Sculpture Collection. The exhibition marks the 1900 years since the beginning of Adrian's Principate in AD 117, an anniversary that was celebrated in manifold ways by major European museums and cultural institutions.

The Athenian Kosmetai gallery in the permanent exhibition of the Sculpture Collection was selected as the ideal setting for the development of the museological concept. Portraits of the Emperor Hadrian are on display centrally in an imaginary philosophical dialogue about Greek culture with emblematic figures of intellectuals such as Metrodorus, Antonius Polemon and Herodes Atticus. Portraits of Plato and Aristoteles, standing as symbols of Greek philosophical thought, observe the imagined conservation, along with the Kosmetai at the back of the hall, i.e. the officials who were responsible for the intellectual and physical education of the ephebes in the Athenian gymnasia of the imperial period. Through this enriched exhibition narrative, the guardians of the traditional education (paideia) of ancient Athens are approached with new interpretative media that highlight the deep spiritual affinity between Hellenic and Roman culture.

The world of the Athenian Gymnasia is also enlivened by a series of representative exhibits and the splendid bust of Antinous, the emperor's beloved companion, who was deified after his premature death and venerated in the Gymnasia as a model of youthful beauty and vigour.

Opening Hours: Monday 13:00-20:00, Tuesday-Sunday 09:00-16:00

On the occasion of the 90th anniversary of the Bank of Greece, the Centre for Culture, Research and Documentation of the Bank presents an exhibition of 160 artworks by notable Greek artists, selected from its Collection. The Bank’s Collection comprises nearly 3,000 pieces, mostly figurative paintings and prints (in addition to a small number of sculptures) from the mid-19th century to this day, which highlight various aspects of modern Greek art.

On the occasion of the 90th anniversary of the Bank of Greece, the Centre for Culture, Research and Documentation of the Bank presents an exhibition of 160 artworks by notable Greek artists, selected from its Collection. The Bank’s Collection comprises nearly 3,000 pieces, mostly figurative paintings and prints (in addition to a small number of sculptures) from the mid-19th century to this day, which highlight various aspects of modern Greek art.Structured around the main themes that have been and, to this day, remain sources of inspiration for lasting ideas in modern Greek art, the exhibition unfolds along three broad narrative lines: antiquity, everyday life and the landscape, all central axes in modern Greek art.

A common thread through this exhibition is the Greek artists’ long-lasting interest in these themes, which have served as frames of reference for their creative expression, the development of their personal artistic idiom and – often –  the highlighting of the notion of ‘Greekness’.

The works on display lend themselves to multi-layered readings, fruitful comparisons and interpretationsof the ways each theme has advanced changing intentions and objectives – artistic, ideological, social – bringing forward respective ideas to Greek society during each era. In this light, the Collection itself can be approached as a ‘frame of reference’ for a body of artworks that attempts to unveil and, over time, articulate various facets of Greek cultural identity.


OPENING HOURS:
Thursday & Sunday, 10:00 -18:00 
Friday & Satuday 10:00 - 22:00