Islamic and Byzantine Art in Athens

We started out the day with a presentation on the theater of Dionysus by Tori, who told us about the various festivals in Athens dedicated to this god. Then we met up with Anthoulla, who works for the Australian Institute of Archeology, and went to the Islamic Benaki museum. The museum is in an area that used to be run-down but in the past ten years has been revitalized. Some of the graffiti in the area inspired a conversation about the political activism of Greek students, especially in relation to the economic crisis, on which Vania will present later in the trip. Lia gave her presentation on Islamic art outside the museum, and then we headed inside and had a tour guided by the curator who showed us Islamic ceramics, textiles, and armor. Islamic art looks very different from Western art because the depiction of humans and animals is forbidden, so there is a lot more emphasis on patterns and materials. We also got to go to the roof of the museum which had an amazing view of Athens. We ate lunch in Thissio, where we enjoyed Greek food other then gyros and people watched in a new part of town.


After lunch we went to the Byzantine Museum in Kolonaki, which is a very nice area of town, sort of like the Beverly Hills of Athens. Ashley M. did her presentation on the Greek Orthodox saints Nikolas and John the Baptist, who appeared in some of the Byzantine images. We saw a variety of art, which was mostly religious. We were able to apply our knowledge from Art History to some of the artifacts, such as a Good Shepherd statue and the many images of Mary and Jesus.


After the Byzantine Museum, we walked to the British School at Athens, where college students and archeologists study Ancient Greek culture and artifacts. The British School has their own collection of ancient artifacts, including an Athenian coin, a drinking vessel, and a Cycladic figure (much more exciting than they sound!) We were allowed to hold the objects with gloves on, but we can't show you any close up pictures because the British School has not yet published these findings to the public, so they still own all the rights to images of the objects. We also listened to Elizabeth's presentation on the Grand Tour, which was a trip wealthy young Europeans took in the 18th and early 19th centuries to Italy and Greece. People of this time were obsessed with the Greeks and Romans and usually kept journals about the sights they saw in their travels. Because of their sketches in these journals, historians know what ancient buildings looked like several hundred years ago, for example, what the Parthenon looked like before Lord Elgin removed sculptures from it and took them back to Britain. We were able to look through some of these original journals, in addition to looking at photographs of sights we will visit later before they were excavated and destroyed. A particularly interesting one was of the city of Athens with a bunch of houses still covering the space that is now the excavation site of the Athenian Agora.


We spent the rest of the evening having a leisurely dinner and shopping in Athens. We also packed and prepared to leave Athens tomorrow for Nafplio.