What I can see

Next to the Athens City Arts Centre, is a lesser-known museum, dedicated to Eleftherios Venizelos. It includes Venizelos’ personal belongings, portraits, depictions of him on various objects, records of his political life (e.g. documents, letters, photographs, etc.) and audiovisual material, such as informative projections, excerpts of speeches and a rizitiko (Cretan traditional) song, recorded by him. In addition, the museum’s library contains titles that are exclusively related to him. Next to the museum, we can see the monumental site of ​​the EAT-ESA (Special Investigation Department of the Hellenic Military Police) headquarters detention facilities, a place of torture by the dictatorial regime’s top security force.

What I can't see

The collections come from the Cretans Zacharias and Antonios Makatounis, who donated them to the City of Athens. The museum is temporarily closed due to renovation works. Eleftherios Venizelos (1864-1936) is considered one of the leading politicians of modern Greece. His successes in victorious wars, the modernizing of the state and his stance as a rival to the king are today unevenly commemorated. The dark sides of his political life are overlooked, such as the criminalization of communist and anarchist ideas (Idionym) or his discreet, but strong support for fascist groups that carried out pogroms against the Jews of Thessaloniki. The achievement of his goals, his political realism, but also the current situation in Greece, where the vast majority of Greeks have a clear aversion to monarchy, due to subsequent events associated with post-civil war Greece and the dictatorship, have significantly favoured his posthumous fame.

Info

• Address: V. Sofias Av.- Eleftherias Park
• Phone: +30 210 7224238

Bibliography