Venue

The Museum of Byzantine Culture was chosen as the main venue for the symposium for a number of reasons. First, it is considered to be the best museum of Byzantine and Post-Byzantine art internationally known. Second, it is located downtown, close to the most important sites of the city. Third, it is within walking distance from the majority of city hotels. And finally, it has very interesting exhibits and warm amphitheatres.
The Museum of Byzantine Culture aims in presenting 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.