Artistic Christmas gifts from famous Greek museums

Make the most artistic gifts to celebrate Christmas and the New Year!

This Christmas if you don’t want to make an ordinary gift but an artistic Christmas gift, you should visit the museums. This year the shops inside the most famous Greek museums are selling the most artistic Christmas gifts you have ever seen! The location of the museums is really convenient because they are in central spots in Athens and all of them are very close to metro or bus stations. Some of them have a site with an e-shop which makes your purchase even easier! In their displays you can find objects inspired from their collections and buy a gift which is going to impress the recipient!

Acropolis Museum

The Christmas gift proposal of Acropolis Museum is also the lucky charm of 2016! It is inspired by a marble magic sphere which was found near the ancient theater of Dionysos. It costs 32,00€. It depicts the god Sun on a throne, a lion, a dragon and a variety of magic symbols. The sphere seems to be used in rituals with the hope that the magic power that it has will lead to good and bring happiness.

See the rest of the museums and the artistic gifts you can buy here

Greek Christmas cookies! How to make “melomakarona”!

Learn how to make the famous Greek Christmas cookies “melomakarona”! Recipe and video!

The history behind “melomakarona”

“Melomakarona” are the traditional Christmas cookies in Greece. Everyone loves them because they are moist with honey! The best melomakarona are those which are crispy on the outside and soft and moist on the inside! They are really delicious and they smell spices! The best Christmas proposal!

The etymology of the word “melomakarona” is Greek from the words meli (honey) and makaroni (spaggeti). The word makaroni comes from the dinner that ancient Greeks offer after the funeral of a beloved person. This dinner has the name “makaronia” and the pie they make in the memory of that person called “makaria”. Later in the “makaria” pie, Greeks added honey (in Greek the honey is translated as “meli”), thus we have meli + makaria, which over the years called “melomakarona”. The reason why those spiced melomakarona became the traditional Christmas cookies is that they have lots of honey which from ancient times in Greece, symbolized the creativity and the wellbeing, two things that we want from the new year to bring us!

Watch here the video and the recipe of melomakarona

Christmas at Acropolis Museum

Christmas at Acropolis Museum is full of surprises! Acropolis Museum is prepared for Christmas 2015 with imaginative activities for children, Acropolis made of Lego, happy melodies and songs and many more surprises! Christmas events of Acropolis Museum have just been announced and they will take place on December 19, December 20 and December 27, 2015.

Description of the events at Acropolis Museum for Christmas 2015

Workshop for children “Temples and other buildings made of Lego, inspired from Acropolis”

Little friends of Acropolis museum will have the opportunity to create, using Lego and their imagination, their own buildings! Children will be inspired from Greek temples and the architectural style of Acropolis.

Date of the workshop: December 19, 2015 & December 20, 2015

Operating hours: 11:00am – 1:00pm

The workshop is addressed to children from 7 to 11 years old. In order to participate a phone booking is required.

Ticket price: 2€ per child

Contact: ++30210 9000900

See all the Christmas events of the Acropolis Museum here

Digital Museum for the Academy of Plato

Academy of Plato has finally its own museum, dedicated to the great philosopher and his magnificent work. The brand new museum of Athens is a creation of the Foundation of the Hellenic World and inaugurated by the Mayor of Athens, Giorgos Kaminis and the Vice President of the Hellenic Foundation Sophia Kounenakis – Efremoglou.

The new digital museum is dedicated to Plato and his work and just started its operation. All the inhabitants and visitors of Greece are invited to walk through the streets that Plato walked and taught and get initiated in his work through digital representations and special constructions included in the new museum.

Today, when we speak about the Academy of Plato, we have in mind both the specific neighborhood of Athens “Academy of Plato” and the actual academy, Plato’s school of Philosophy. This exhibition aims to be a bridge between the worldwide famous academy with the place that this academy was located.

One exhibition about Plato could be hosted at any big museum of the world. But his history begun in this city and that consist a big part of the narration of the museum.

This exhibition travels into time. It begins from the Athenian neighborhood “Academy of Plato” as it is today. Time goes backwards and travels us in Plato’s era, specifically outside Plato’s door. The visitor is about to knock on his door.

Rooms of the exhibition

In the first room...continue reading about the digital museum of Plato's Academy

The ancient temple in the Marathon dam

The ancient temple at the base of the Marathon dam was built by the Athenians in order to “exorcise” the water scarcity.

Eleftherios Venizelos already counted one year as Prime Minister of Greece, when on October 20, 1928, in the presence of President of the Republic Admiral Kountouriotis, launched the project, which finally brought water to Attica: The Marathon dam

The Marathon dam created the homonym artificial lake at the confluence of the streams Charadras and Barnabas. Before the construction of the dam was finished...continue reading

“Neon” exhibition of Contemporary Art

State Museum of Contemporary Art presents “Stephen Antonakos – Prints”

The State Museum of contemporary Art presents for the first time the exhibition “Stephen Antonakos – Prints” of the famous artist Stephen Antonakos. This exhibition traces the progress of Antonakos’s graphic work highlighting the artist’s many innovations: cuts; burns; collages; tears; seriality; handmade papers; reflection; and layered, multiple printing techniques. As always the artist’s concerns with incomplete forms in space dominate. The exhibition will run from November 27, 2015 until February 27, 2016 at the Lazaristes Monastery. The opening will be on Friday, November 27, 2015.

 The work “Prints” is donated by the artist to the National Museum of Contemporary Art in 2012. Stephen Antonakos explained that he...continue reading

The most impressive waterfalls in Greece

Greece is known for the beautiful islands, the sea and the warm sun. What most people do not know is that Greece has also wonderful mountains with impressive waterfalls!

Greece, together with Austria, is Europe’s most mountainous country. Greece’s territories are mountainous and hilly more than 70% of its total area. In this area grows the incredible number of 860 mountains. The 448 of them are low and their elevation is no more than 1.000 meters. The 359 have an average height of 1.000 – 2.000 meters. The highest mountains in Greece are 53 and their elevation is above 2.000 meters.

In all this mountains more than 100 impressive waterfalls have been created. Those little miracles of nature are one great experience for photographers, for lovers of nature and for hikers.

Read about Greece's waterfalls and see amazing pictures here