The Museum of Ancient Greek, Byzantine and Post-Byzantine Musical Instruments is a

museum A museum ( ; plural museums or, rarely, musea) is a building or institution that cares for and displays a collection of artifacts and other objects of artistic, cultural, historical, or scientific importance. Many public museums make thes ...

in Oia, Santorini,

Greece Greece,, or , romanized: ', officially the Hellenic Republic, is a country in Southeast Europe. It is situated on the southern tip of the Balkans, and is located at the crossroads of Europe, Asia, and Africa. Greece shares land borders ...

.Enjoy Thessaloniki
/ref> The three exhibition spaces display over 200 musical instruments, which existed between 2,800 BC and the beginning of the 20th century and have been accurately reconstructed with the help of the

Aristotle University of Thessaloniki Aristotle (; grc-gre, Ἀριστοτέλης ''Aristotélēs'', ; 384–322 BC) was a Greek philosopher and polymath during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. Taught by Plato, he was the founder of the Peripatetic school of phil ...

to compose the museum's initial collection. They were made on the basis of

pictorial An image is a visual representation of something. It can be two-dimensional, three-dimensional, or somehow otherwise feed into the visual system to convey information. An image can be an artifact, such as a photograph or other two-dimensiona ...

and literary evidence (pottery, sculpture, figurines, illuminated

Byzantine The Byzantine Empire, also referred to as the Eastern Roman Empire or Byzantium, was the continuation of the Roman Empire primarily in its eastern provinces during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, when its capital city was Constantinopl ...

manuscripts) using the same materials mentioned in the sources. Each instrument is accompanied by the pictorial evidence of its existence. In many cases it is also possible to hear the sounds they make. Some notable examples include the seven-stringed

phorminx :''Phorminx is also a genus of cylindrical bark beetles.'' The phorminx ( grc, φόρμιγξ) was one of the oldest of the Ancient Greek stringed musical instruments, in the yoke lutes family, intermediate between the lyre and the kithara. It co ...

of the Minoan period, the double

pipes Pipe(s), PIPE(S) or piping may refer to: Objects * Pipe (fluid conveyance), a hollow cylinder following certain dimension rules ** Piping, the use of pipes in industry * Smoking pipe ** Tobacco pipe * Half-pipe and quarter pipe, semi-circula ...

with an air chamber (5th century BC). The bagpipes were played on the

Greek islands Greece has many islands, with estimates ranging from somewhere around 1,200 to 6,000, depending on the minimum size to take into account. The number of inhabited islands is variously cited as between 166 and 227. The largest Greek island by a ...

, by the Greeks of the

Black Sea The Black Sea is a marginal mediterranean sea of the Atlantic Ocean lying between Europe and Asia, east of the Balkans, south of the East European Plain, west of the Caucasus, and north of Anatolia. It is bounded by Bulgaria, Georgia, Rom ...

, and in

Thrace Thrace (; el, Θράκη, Thráki; bg, Тракия, Trakiya; tr, Trakya) or Thrake is a geographical and historical region in Southeast Europe, now split among Bulgaria, Greece, and Turkey, which is bounded by the Balkan Mountains to ...

. Apart from its exhibition space, the museum also has a music library, an electronic archive of scores, and a musicology research department. The museum opened in 1997 and was housed in a restored three-storey building in the Ladadika district in the centre of Thessaloniki, until 2010.

File:Macedonian_Museums-90-Arxaiwv_Mousikvn_Organvn-405.jpg, Bagpipes ( tsampouna) played on the Greek islands File:Macedonian_Museums-90-Arxaiwv_Mousikvn_Organvn-406.jpg, Seven-stringed phorminx of the Minoan period File:Macedonian_Museums-90-Arxaiwv_Mousikvn_Organvn-408.jpg, Double pipes with an air chamber

References

{{coord, 40.63505, 22.93773, format=dms, type:landmark_region:GR, display=title Museums in Greece Art Nouveau museum buildings Musical instrument museums Byzantine music Music organizations based in Greece

See also

References