“Kostas Kotsanas” Museum of Ancient Greek Technology is located in the “heart” of Athens, within walking distance from the Hellenic Parliament House in Syntagma. In a historic Art Nouveau building of 700sq.m., visitors have the rare chance to discover a relatively unknown aspect of ancient Greek civilisation, through the permanent exhibition “The Hi-Tech Inventions of Ancient Greece – The Origins of Modern Technology”.
The exhibition features over 100 selected exhibits, all functional and interactive: from the automatic servant of Philon (the first operating robot of humanity) to the “static” and mobile automatic theatres (the “cinema” and automotive “puppet show” of ancient Greeks, respectively) of Heron of Alexandria; from the automatic hydraulic clock of Ctesibius to the Antikythera mechanism, the world’s first analog computer.
The new museum in Athens completes the trilogy of Kostas Kotsanas Museums, since two more permanent exhibitions are running in Katakolo and Ancient Olympia. As a cultural organisation, the awarded Kotsana Museum has conducted a 25-year painstaking research and is dedicated to highlighting ancient Greek technology through its touring exhibitions in Greece and abroad.