A museum full of history
The History of the Archaeological Museum of Chania
The History of the Archaeological Museum of Chania
The Archaeological Museum of Chania in the Church of St Francis permanently closed its doors on Sunday, 13 September 2020.
Its long journey began in 1899, when the Hegemonic Council of Crete voted in favour of its foundation. After many adventures, on 14 July 1962 the Museum officially opened to the public in the church of the Venetian Monastery of St Francis, before eventually finding a permanent home in Chalepa in 2022.
For almost sixty years, the Archaeological Museum of Chania in the heart of the Old Town of Chania was the ark that preserved, conserved and displayed the archaeological treasures of the land of Chania, offering thousands of visitors and scholars from Greece and the whole world knowledge and education, aesthetic enjoyment and valuable experiences.
Since 2022, visitors young and old have been able to view the antiquities in their new, equally welcoming home in the suburb of Chalepa, in Museum galleries that exploit the scientific and technological conquests of the 21st century to the full.
The rich collections of the Archaeological Museum of Chania, arranged in the spirit and according to the requirements of contemporary museum practices, continue to broadcast their powerful, diachronic cultural message in the new, multidimensionally evolving conditions of the Greek and international community.
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The founding of the Archaeological Museum of Chania
At the close of the 19th century, the collection of ancient artefacts that was to form the nucleus of the Archaeological Museum of Chania began to take shape, consisting of excavated, donated, purchased and confiscated finds. In 1899, on the establishment of the Cretan State (1899-1913), the Hegemonic Council passed a law on the protection of Cretan antiquities, providing for the establishment of two public Archaeological Museums in Heraklion and Chania. The law decreed that the Chania Museum would house antiquities from the Prefectures of Chania, Sfakia and Rethymnon. Information on the early years of the Chania Museum is scanty, with very little photographic and archive material. The archaeological collection, which began to take shape in 1900, included, apart from the excavation finds, “over a thousand objects” from the private collection of Michael Tsivourakis, which was donated to the Museum in May 1900. The Archaeological Museum was originally housed in two rooms on the ground floor of the Government House of Chania. Its proximity to busy administrative offices and the Ministries of the Cretan State exposed the antiquities to extensive wear and tear, severely damaging some of them. The collection remained in the Government House until the outbreak of a major fire on 20 September 1934. Many ancient objects were destroyed, while others (such as the statue of Hadrian from the sanctuary of Diktynna and the “Philosopher” of Elyros) were broken in pieces, and many of the rest lost any indication of their provenance. The search began for a new building in which the Museum finds could be safely housed and displayed. In the meantime, they were temporarily stored in the basement of what is now the 1st Gymnasium of Chania.
From the looting of the German Occupation to the uncertainty of the postwar period
After the fire of 1934 and the removal of the antiquities to the 1st Gymnasium of Chania, Spyridon Marinatos, the Ephor of Antiquities of Crete, and A. Katsoulis, the Curator of the Museum, arranged and sealed the more delicate and valuable objects in display cases, where they remained for seven years. In 1941, during the Second World War, the Germans commandeered the building and moved the antiquities to the Municipal Market of Chania.
On the initiative of Nikolaos Tomadakis, the Director of the Historical Archive of Crete, and the Municipality of Chania, the antiquities were soon afterwards rehoused in the Küçük Hassan Mosque in the Venetian harbour of Chania, which was commandeered to this end, on 1 November 1941. The Museum was “partly set in order” by Vassilios Theophanides, the Ephor of West Crete, and inaugurated in 1942, operating all through the war “systematically and satisfactorily every day” from 8-12 a.m. and 4-6 p.m.
The devastation caused to the Museum by the German Occupation is evident from the detailed checking and listing of the contents carried out in 1946. A third of the antiquities and almost all the valuable objects had been removed from the Museum. Their fate is still unknown to this day.
After the war, the antiquities were displayed in poor conditions. The reports of Ephors Nikolaos Platon and Stylianos Alexiou repeatedly condemn the Mosque as unsuitable due to the damp and its proximity to the sea, making it urgently necessary to relocate the Museum somewhere more suitable.
The Museum is established
Securing a safe, satisfactory space to house the Archaeological Museum was now a matter of some urgency, and Ephor Nikolaos Platon and Curator Stylianos Alexiou made every effort to find suitable premises. In the mid-1950s, the church of the Venetian Monastery of St Francis was chosen for the purpose. Before the Archaeological Museum could be relocated, however, the church had to be restored. Over the course of its long history, it had been used and modified for many different purposes: a mosque, a cinema, an army depot. The restoration work began in 1958. Shortly afterwards, in 1960, Ephor Stylianos Alexiou and Chief Technician Zacharias Kanakis began to record, classify and conserve the objects to be displayed. On completion of the restoration work in December 1961, the systematic removal of the antiquities from the Küçük Hassan Mosque to the Church of St Francis began. The Archaeological Museum officially opened its doors to the public on 14 July 1962. After a hiatus due to the restoration of the church interior in 1977-1981, under the supervision of Ephor Yannis Tzedakis, the Archaeological Museum reopened on 12 July 1981. The next large-scale intervention was carried out in 2000, under Ephor Maria Andreadaki-Vlazaki. A row of three small rooms in the north wing of St Francis was modified to house the Konstantinos, Marika and Kyriakos Mitsotakis Collection, which was donated to the Archaeological Museum of Chania in November 2000 and inaugurated on 2 December of the same year. On 13 September 2020, after 58 years of operation, the Archaeological Museum of Chania closed its doors in the church of the Venetian Monastery of St Francis which had housed it so welcomingly. After a turbulent journey through space and time, a journey closely interwoven with the history of the land of its “birth”, the Museum has now finally found a permanent home in the historic suburb of Chalepa.
The relocation of the Archaeological Museum
From St Francis to Chalepa
Timeline
1899
1900
1913
1934
1940-1942
1942
1946
1950-1962
1962-2020
1996
2013
2020
