Kolonáki and the museum quarter

The often overlooked but fascinating Benáki Museum houses a private collection donated to the state in the 1950s by Antónis Benákis, a wealthy cotton merchant. Its exhibits range from Mycenaean jewellery, Greek costumes and folk artefacts to memorabilia of Byron and the Greek War of Independence, as well as jewellery from the Hélène Stathatos collection.

Among the more unusual items are collections of early Greek Gospels, liturgical vestments and church ornaments rescued by Greek refugees from Asia Minor in 1922. There are also some dazzling embroideries and body ornaments and unique historical material on the Cretan statesman Eleftherios Venizelos, Asia Minor and the Cretan Revolution. An additional attraction, especially if you’ve been dodging traffic all day, is the rooftop café, with views over the nearby National Gardens. The museum shop stocks a fine selection of art books and CDs, plus some of the best posters and postcards in the city.

The small, private Museum of Cycladic Art is a beautifully presented collection that includes objects from the Cycladic civilization (third millennium BC, from the islands of the Cyclades group), pre-Minoan Bronze Age (second millennium BC) and the period from the fall of Mycenae to around 700 BC, plus a selection of Archaic, Classical and Hellenistic pottery.

The Cycladic objects are on the first floor – above all, distinctive marble bowls and folded-arm figurines (mostly female) with sloping wedge heads whose style influenced twentieth-century artists like Moore, Picasso and Brancusi. The exact purpose of the effigies is unknown but, given their frequent discovery in grave-barrows, it’s possible that they were spirit-world guides for the deceased or representations of the Earth Goddess. Their clean, white simplicity is in fact misleading, for they would originally have been painted. Look closely, and you can see that many still bear traces.

Of the ancient Greek art on the upper floors, the highlight is the superb black-figure pottery, especially a collection of painted Classical-era bowls, often showing two unrelated scenes on opposite sides – for example one of the star exhibits depicts revellers on one face and three men in cloaks conversing on the other. On the ground floor and basement there’s a tiny children’s area and a good shop, as well as a pleasant café (with vegetarian choices) in an internal courtyard. A covered walkway connects to the nineteenth-century Stathatos House, magnificently restored as an extension for temporary exhibitions.

Excellently displayed in a beautiful building, the Byzantine and Christian Museum is far more wide-ranging than you might expect. Exhibits start with art from the very earliest days of Christianity, whose fish and dove motifs can’t disguise their extremely close parallels with Classical Greek objects. There are displays on everyday Byzantine life; reconstructions of parts of early churches (mosaic floors and chunks of masonry, some even from the Christian Parthenon); a Coptic section with antique clothing such as leather shoes decorated with gold leaf; and tombs, in some of which offerings were left, again a reminder of a pagan heritage.

But the highlights are the icons, with the earliest being from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. There are dozens of lovely examples, many of them double-sided, some mounted to be carried in procession, and you can follow the development of their style from the simplicity of the earliest to the Renaissance-influenced art of the sixteenth century. Alongside the icons are some fine frescoes, including an entire dome reconstructed inside the museum.

The only “cultural” endowment of the 1967–74 junta, the War Museum becomes predictably militaristic and right-wing as it approaches modern events: the Asia Minor campaign, Greek forces in Korea, Cyprus and so on. However, the bulk of the collection consists of weaponry and uniforms, with a large collection of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century swords and handguns, and a particular concentration on the World War II era. Earlier times are also covered with displays on changing warfare from Mycenae through to the Byzantines and Turks, and an array of models of the acropolises and castles of Greece, both Classical and medieval. Outside are artillery pieces and planes, including a full-scale model of the Daedalus, one of the first-ever military aircraft, which dropped bombs on Turkish positions in December 1912 during the Balkan Wars.

Despite housing some 9500 paintings the National Gallery is a bit of a disappointment. Its core collection is of Greek art from the sixteenth century to the present, and of the artists shown here only El Greco is well known outside Greece. One of the few modern painters to stand out is Nikos Hatzikyriakos-Ghikas (Ghika), well represented on the ground floor. On the mezzanine is a small group of canvases by the primitive painter Theophilos. Perhaps more interesting is the large temporary exhibition space, often hosting major travelling exhibitions. Near the National Gallery lie what are believed to be the fourth-century BC foundations of Aristotle’s Lyceum – where he taught for thirteen years and to which Socrates was a frequent visitor. Surrounded by museums, this seems an appropriate place for it, but important as the discovery is for scholars, there’s nothing actually to see.