Museum of Byzantine Culture
The Museum of Byzantine Culture is considered to be the best museum of Byzantine and Post-Byzantine art internationally known. It is located downtown, close to the most important sites of the city. It is within walking distance from the majority of city hotels and has very interesting exhibits and warm amphitheatres.
The Museum of Byzantine Culture presents various aspects of life during the byzantine and post-byzantine periods: art, ideology, social structure and religion, as well as how historical changes and the political situation were affecting people' s everyday life. It was awarded the Council of Europe Museum Prize for 2005, following the concurrent recommendation of the Council' s Committee for Culture, Science and Education. The founding of the Museum of Byzantine Culture and its official opening in 1994 in Thessaloniki, the most "Byzantine" city of the modern Greek state, marks the end of a story that had begun long before, just after the city' s liberation in 1912.
The Archaeological Museum of Thessaloniki (AMTH) occupies a distinct place on Greece’s cultural map. It is the largest museum in Northern Greece and one of the most important nationwide. Its collections cover all chronological periods from prehistory to late antiquity and derive from all over Northern Greece. Its main collections focus on ceramics and mosaics, sculpture and miniature art and metalwork. In 2003 it was completely renovated in order to meet new technical and museological advances. The new exhibition of antiquities is organised into six permanent thematic units: Prehistoric Macedonia; towards the birth of cities; Macedonia from the 7th c. BC until late antiquity; Thessaloniki, Metropolis of Macedonia; The gold of Macedon, which encompass all aspects of private and public life in antiquity, and finally Field House Garden Grave, the Museum’s exhibition in the open courtyard. Recently the museum has been enriched by a unique exhibition of pioneering interactive systems regarding ancient Macedonia, entitled Macedonia from fragments to pixels. Since 2012, the AMTH has organized various temporary exhibitions in collaboration with many national and international organizations and institutes.