The National Archaeological Museum

The Mycenaean gold

Straight ahead from the entrance sit the treasures Heinrich Schliemann dug out of the shaft graves of Grave Circle A at Mycenae in 1876. He found five gold masks, and the one he named the Mask of Agamemnon came from Grave V. It was hammered from gold leaf over a wooden form and dates to about 1525 BC, three or four centuries before any plausible Trojan War, so the name is a showman's label rather than an identification. The room also holds inlaid daggers and rock-crystal, and it is the most concentrated display of Bronze Age wealth anywhere.

Come early in the day, because groups gather here quickly and the case fills. The museum opens at 13:00 on Tuesdays all year, so plan any Tuesday visit around that.

The Antikythera mechanism

Corroded bronze fragments in a case, recovered in 1901 from a Roman-era shipwreck off Antikythera. Study of the gears showed it was an analogue computer for predicting the positions of the sun and moon and the dates of eclipses and games. Nothing of comparable mechanical complexity survives from anywhere for another thousand years, which is why researchers keep returning to it.

The case labels explain the gearing, so read them before deciding what you are looking at, because the object itself looks like lumps of stone until you understand it. The same wreck produced the Antikythera Youth, a bronze that stands nearby, and the two together make this gallery worth a slow half hour. The entrance is included in the €20 full ticket.

The Thera wall paintings

Upstairs hang the frescoes lifted from Akrotiri on Santorini, buried under volcanic ash in the sixteenth century BC and preserved by it. Look for the boxing boys, the antelopes and the fleet fresco, each lifted from a house wall and remounted here. These are the only substantial body of Aegean Bronze Age painting that survives anywhere, which makes the gallery a singular record rather than a selection.

They were painted before the Mycenaean gold downstairs, so visiting them after the ground floor puts the collection in date order. The rooms sit on the upper floor, reached by the main stair, and benches make it a sensible place to rest mid-visit. Photographs are permitted without flash, though the light on some cases makes reflections hard to avoid.

For travelers tracing these frescoes back to the island that preserved them, the museum pairs naturally with a day spent on tours in Athens that set the collection in its wider setting.

The bronzes

The Artemision Bronze is a two-metre god poised to throw, raised from the sea off Cape Artemision. Nobody agrees whether it is Zeus with a thunderbolt or Poseidon with a trident, because whatever he held is missing, and scholars still argue both cases. In the same gallery stands the Horse and Jockey of Artemision, from the same wreck, a small boy riding flat out.

It is one of very few surviving ancient bronzes with real movement in it, since most ancient bronze was melted down long ago for its metal. Give the horse a full circuit, because the straining legs read differently from each side. Both pieces are on the museum's short list, so expect company around the cases even in quieter months.

The kouroi and the grave stelae

The long halls of Archaic kouroi hold rigid, smiling, life-size young men, and set side by side they let you watch Greek sculpture learn to move across a century and a half. The poses barely change, the anatomy does, and the sequence rewards standing at one end and walking the line. Beyond them hang the classical grave reliefs, many brought from Kerameikos, the potters' quarter that served as the city's main cemetery.

The handshake between the dead and a living relative does more with less than almost anything in the building. If the reliefs draw you in, the Kerameikos site itself costs €10 full or €5 reduced, though its official page has printed temporarily closed under summer hours, so check before going.

The week

From 1 May to 31 October the museum runs Monday and Wednesday to Sunday 08:00 to 20:00, and on Tuesday from 13:00 to 20:00. In April, and from 1 November to 31 March, it runs Monday and Wednesday to Sunday 08:30 to 15:30, while Tuesday stays 13:00 to 20:00 all year. Last admission is thirty minutes before closing.

The Tuesday late opening is the useful quirk. Morning crowds peak in summer, so a Tuesday afternoon works well, and in winter the short 15:30 close means you should arrive by early afternoon. Two hours covers the five highlights above without hurrying, and a full visit runs to half a day.

Decide before you enter which galleries you are skipping, because the building is large.

Why the Tuesday matters

It is the same in both seasons and it catches people every week: the museum is shut until one in the afternoon while every archaeological site in the city has been open since eight. It is also the one day in winter when the museum is open in the evening, so a Tuesday is a good museum afternoon and a wasted museum morning. The opening-hours page lines this up against everything else.

Getting there

The museum stands on 28is Oktovriou, also called Patission, at number 44. Victoria station on Line 1 is about seven minutes away on foot, and Omonia on Lines 1 and 2 about ten. From Monastiraki it is roughly a twenty-five minute walk.

A single metro ticket costs €1.20 for 90 minutes, so you can ride in and walk back. The neighbourhood is workaday rather than picturesque, which is part of why the museum is quieter than its collection deserves. Keep to the main streets around Patission and you will have no trouble.

Buses along Patission also stop nearby, though the metro is the simplest option. Entry costs €20 full or €10 reduced.

Inside

There is a shop, a café that hosts changing displays of contemporary art, and a garden courtyard, so a mid-visit break needs no exit and re-entry. Two hours covers the five highlights without hurrying. A full visit is half a day, and the building is large enough that it is worth deciding in advance which halves you are skipping.

The ground floor carries the Mycenaean gold and the bronzes, the upper floor the Thera frescoes, which gives you a natural split if time runs short. Tickets cost €20 full and €10 reduced. Unlike the Acropolis Museum, this is a state museum, so a public-sector strike can close it, and free-entry days draw the largest crowds of all.

The café is the sensible place to regroup.