The Archaeological Museum of Polygyros is a museum in Polygyros, Chalkidiki, in Greece. The museum is located in Iroou Square in the town centre and displays representative archaeological finds from all over Chalkidiki. More specifically, they cover a span of time ranging from the Bronze Age to the Roman period and come from ancient Stageira (near Olympias), Toroni, Pyrgadikia, Aphytos, Polygyros, Ierissos, Stratoni, as also from the ancient city of Olynthos. Museum is currently closed for complete reconstruction. The Archaeological Museum of Polygyros was closed in January 2012 and reconstruction began in May 2012. Completion of reconstruction is expected sometime in summer 2014.
A museum is an institution that cares for (conserves) a collection of artifacts and other objects of artistic, cultural, historical, or scientific importance. Many public museums make these items available for public viewing through exhibits that may be permanent or temporary. The largest museums are located in major cities throughout the world, while thousands of local museums exist in smaller cities, towns and rural areas. Museums have varying aims, ranging from serving researchers and specialists to serving the general public. The goal of serving researchers is increasingly shifting to serving the general public.
Polygyros is a town and municipality in Central Macedonia, Greece. It is the capital of Chalkidiki.
Chalkidiki, also spelt Chalkidike, Chalcidice, Khalkidhiki or Halkidiki, is a peninsula and regional unit of Greece, part of the Region of Central Macedonia in Northern Greece. The autonomous Mount Athos region constitutes the easternmost part of the peninsula, but not of the regional unit.
The most important exhibits are an unfinished kouros of the Archaic period, weapons and jewellery of the Late Archaic and Classical periods, a marble head of Dionysos from ancient Aphytos (4th century BC), a black-figure column crater from Vrasta (late 6th century BC), and two marble grave statues from the heroön at Stratoni (1st century BC). Particularly important are the finds from the city and the cemetery of Olynthos, of the Archaic and Classical period, because they give a full picture of the everyday activities and the public life of that time.
A kouros is the modern term given to free-standing ancient Greek sculptures that first appear in the Archaic period in Greece and represent nude male youths. In Ancient Greek kouros means "youth, boy, especially of noble rank". Although Kouroi have been found in many ancient Greek territories, they were especially prominent in Attica and Boiotia. The term kouros was first proposed for what were previously thought to be depictions of Apollo by V. I. Leonardos in 1895 in relation to the youth from Keratea, and adopted by Henri Lechat as a generic term for the standing male figure in 1904. Such statues are found across the Greek-speaking world; the preponderance of these were found in sanctuaries of Apollo with more than one hundred from the sanctuary of Apollo Ptoion, Boeotia, alone. These free-standing sculptures were typically marble, but the form is also rendered in limestone, wood, bronze, ivory and terracotta. They are typically life-sized, though early colossal examples are up to 3 meters tall.
Archaic Greece was the period in Greek history lasting from the eighth century BC to the second Persian invasion of Greece in 480 BC, following the Greek Dark Ages and succeeded by the Classical period. The period began with a massive increase in the Greek population and a series of significant changes which rendered the Greek world at the end of the eighth century entirely unrecognisable compared to its beginning. According to Anthony Snodgrass, the Archaic period in ancient Greece was bounded by two revolutions in the Greek world. It began with a "structural revolution" which "drew the political map of the Greek world" and established the poleis, the distinctively Greek city-states, and ended with the intellectual revolution of the Classical period.
The museum has hosted an exhibition entitled 'Three Colonies of Andros in Chalcidice: Sane, Akanthos, Stageira since 1998. Among many other things, it includes three standing or kneeling statues of Nike from the roof of a temple of the 6th century BC, which was originally at Sane and was later incorporated into the urban complex of Ouranoupolis.
Sane was an ancient Greek city in the Acte headland of Chalcidice, situated upon the low, undulating ground, forming the isthmus which connects the peninsula of Acte with Chalcidice. It was founded by Andrians in the 7th century BCE. The ruins of the ancient city were found in the 21st century. Sane in Acte is mentioned by Herodotus in reference to the march of Xerxes I in Thrace, during the Second Persian invasion of Greece.
Thanks to the exhibition, the Polygyros Museum won the 16th Directorate of Prehistoric and Classical Antiquities' Museum of the Year Award in 1998.
Gallery
A Statue of the Herron at Stratoni
Interior view
Clay Members of the Sanctuary of Ammon Zeus at Afytos
Olynthus was an ancient city of Chalcidice, built mostly on two flat-topped hills 30–40m in height, in a fertile plain at the head of the Gulf of Torone, near the neck of the peninsula of Pallene, about 2.5 kilometers from the sea, and about 60 stadia from Poteidaea. Artefacts found during the excavations of the site are exhibited in the Archaeological Museum of Olynthos.
The Stoa of Attalos was a stoa in the Agora of Athens, Greece. It was built by and named after King Attalos II of Pergamon, who ruled between 159 BC and 138 BC. The current building was reconstructed in 1952–1956 by American architects along with the Greek architect Ioannis Travlos and the Greek Civil Engineer Yeoryios Biris.
The Archaeological Museum of Thessaloniki is a museum in Thessaloniki, Central Macedonia, Greece. It holds and interprets artifacts from the Prehistoric, Archaic, Classical, Hellenistic and Roman periods, mostly from the city of Thessaloniki but also from the region of Macedonia in general.
Ancient Greek sculpture is the sculpture of ancient Greece. Modern scholarship identifies three major stages in monumental sculpture. At all periods there were great numbers of Greek terracotta figurines and small sculptures in metal and other materials.
Classical sculpture refers generally to sculpture from Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome, as well as the Hellenized and Romanized civilizations under their rule or influence, from about 500 BC to around 200 AD. It may also refer more precisely a period within Ancient Greek sculpture from around 500 BC to the onset of the Hellenistic style around 323 BC, in this case usually given a capital "C". The term "classical" is also widely used for a stylistic tendency in later sculpture, not restricted to works in a Neoclassical or classical style.
The marble Kritios Boy or Kritian Boy belongs to the Early Classical period of ancient Greek sculpture. It is the first statue from classical antiquity known to use contrapposto; Kenneth Clark called it "the first beautiful nude in art" It is possible, even likely, that earlier Bronze statues had used the technique, but if they did, they have not survived and Susan Woodford has speculated that the statue is a copy of a Bronze original. The Kritios Boy is thus named because it is attributed, on slender evidence, to Kritios who worked together with Nesiotes or their school, from around 480 BC. As currently mounted, the statue is considerably smaller than life-size at 117 cm, including the supports that replace the missing feet.
Nea Poteidaia is a town in the Moudania municipal unit, in Chalkidiki, Greece. The location is the only land access to the Kassandra Peninsula. Built on the site of the ancient city of Potidaea, 33 kilometers south-west of Polygyros, it was re-founded in 1922 by refugees from Eastern Thrace and Kololimnos, which remained under Turkish rule. Today it has a population of 1,559 (2011).
Akanthos was an ancient Greek city on the Athos peninsula, on the narrow neck of land between the sacred mountain and the mainland, to the northwest of the Xerxes Canal. It was founded in the 7th century BCE as a colony of Andros, itself a colony of Chalcis in Euboea. Chalcidice was multi-cultural. The archaeology of the region suggests that some Hellenes were already there. The site is on the north-east side of Akti, on the most eastern peninsula of Chalcidice.
Delphi Archaeological museum is one of the principal museums of Greece and one of the most visited. It is operated by the Greek Ministry of Culture. Founded in 1903, it has been rearranged several times and houses the discoveries made at the panhellenic sanctuary of Delphi, which date from the Late Helladic (Mycenean) period to the early Byzantine era.
The Archaeological Museum of Piraeus, Athens, Attica, (Greece) contains mainly sculptures, discovered in Piraeus and in the area of the Attic coast from Bronze Age to Roman times
The Aiani Archaeological Museum is a museum in Aiani, West Macedonia, Greece.
The Archaeological Museum of Amphipolis is a museum in Amphipolis, Central Macedonia, Greece. It is located in the archaeological site of ancient Amphipolis, near River Strymon at close range of the Thessaloniki–Kavala national highway and within the walls of the ancient city itself. In the museum, finds from Amphipolis and its surroundings are exhibited. The excavations took place mainly in the period from 1956 to 1984, under the direction of the late archaeologist Dimitris Lazaridis. After his death (1985) his daughter, Calliope Lazaridis, continued the work until 1989.
The Archaeological Museum of Kavala is a museum in Kavala, Eastern Macedonia, Greece, located towards the western end of the Ethnikis Antistasis road in Kavala.
The Archaeological Museum of Thasos is a museum located in Limenas on the island of Thasos, Eastern Macedonia, Greece. It occupies a house that was built in 1934 and recently extended. Storerooms and workshops have already been organised, and nowadays is fully operational: the shop, the official functions room, the old wing, the prehistoric collection, and the new section.
The Archaeological Museum of Pella is a museum in Pella in the Pella regional unit of Central Macedonia. The building was designed by architect Kostas Skroumpellos and is on the site of the ancient city of Pella. It was completed in 2009 with the support of the Greece's Third Community Support Framework.
The Casts Museum occupies two rooms in the basement of the new building of the School of Philosophy of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, in Central Macedonia, Greece. The museum houses a collection of plaster casts, replicas and original archaeological artifacts. The collection dates from the time of the University's founding and is due to K. Romaio, Professor of Classical Archaeology.
Ancient Greek art stands out among that of other ancient cultures for its development of naturalistic but idealized depictions of the human body, in which largely nude male figures were generally the focus of innovation. The rate of stylistic development between about 750 and 300 BC was remarkable by ancient standards, and in surviving works is best seen in sculpture. There were important innovations in painting, which have to be essentially reconstructed due to the lack of original survivals of quality, other than the distinct field of painted pottery.
The Peplos Kore is a statue of a girl and one of the most well-known examples of Archaic Greek art. The 118 cm-high (46 in) high white marble statue was made around 530 BC and originally was colourfully painted. The statue was found, in three pieces, in an 1886 excavation north-west of the Erechtheion on the Athenian Acropolis and is now in the Acropolis Museum in Athens.
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