Museums and collections of Byzantine and Post-Byzantine art in Greece

Abstract

Byzantine and Post-Byzantine monuments and artifacts were completely
neglected in Greece till the mid-1880s, when the theologian George Lampakis
founded the Christian Archaeological Society, whose aim was to collect and
protect remains of Christian antiquity and to establish a Museum of Christian
archaeology. The first Byzantine Museum was founded in Athens only in the
second decade of this century. The Benaki Museum, founded in 1930, has a
large section devoted to Byzantine and Post-Byzantine art. Since the 1950s
many museums of Byzantine and Post-Byzantine art run by the Archaeological
Service or by local church authorities have been founded all over Greece; the
most important is the new Museum of Byzantine Culture in Thessaloniki.