Archaeological Museum of Piraeus

Archaeological Museum of Piraeus

The Archaeological Museum of Piraeus offers the visitor a representative and complete picture of the history of the city, which during antiquity experienced great prosperity both as a commercial center of the eastern Mediterranean and as a naval station of ancient Athens. The type of its exhibits, which come mainly from the wider area of Piraeus and the Attic coast, and the time limits they cover, from the Mycenaean to the Roman era, are representative of the peculiarity, the composition of the population and the history of Piraeus. The museum’s collections consist mainly of excavation finds or accidental finds and antiquities traditions, while they have also been enriched by donations from private collections, such as the Meletopoulou-Nomidou collection and, more recently, the Geroulanou Collection.

The museum is housed in a two-story building, which flanks the Hellenistic theater of Zea on the west and south sides and has a total area of 1,394 sq.m. Its exhibition spaces occupy the ten rooms of the two floors (1,044 sq.m.), while in the basement (350 sq.m.) there are the workshops for the preservation of clay, metal and stone objects, as well as the museum’s warehouse, where archaeological finds from the area of Piraeus, the coastal zone and the islands. The building of the old museum (330 sq.m.), located right next to it, is currently used as a sculpture warehouse, while an open-air sculpture exhibition is to be held in the archaeological site of the Zea theater.