Two Museums in Athens are on the list of 41 spectacular museums to visit before you die. It is the New Acropolis Museum and the Benaki Museum. On the list compiled by experts for the online edition of UK’s The Telegraph, the two museums in Athens are together with world famous museums like Louvre in Paris, Guggenheim in New York, The Hermitage in St. Petersburg.
24. New Acropolis Museum
Inaugurated in June 2009, this light, airy glass-and-concrete building was designed by Swiss architect Bernard Tschumi. Archaic and classical finds from the Acropolis site are displayed here – proud statues of the ancients and life-like stone carvings of animals. The top floor is devoted to the marble frieze that once ran around the top of the Parthenon. About half of the pieces are originals, while the remainder are white plaster copies. The missing pieces were removed by Lord Elgin in 1801 and are now in the British Museum in London. The Greeks have wanted them back for decades, and hope that this blatant presentation will finally convince the British to return them.
25. Benaki Museum
Housed in a neo-classical building with a lovely roof-terrace cafe, this museum traces Greek art right up the 20th century. Sculpture, ceramics, jewellery, paintings, furniture and costumes are on display, but top pieces include the Thessaly Treasure (a hoard of gold filigree jewellery set with precious stones, dating from the second century BC), two early paintings by El Greco, and the reconstruction of two 18th-century, wood-panelled, Ottoman-inspired living rooms.
US president Barack Obama in Acropolis Museum during his historic visit to Athens on Nov 16th 2016.
