At a glance
🎟️ 8€
Reduced €4. Free for EU citizens under 25.
🕣 8:30–15:30
Every day except Tuesday. Go in the morning.
🚇 Evangelismos
Line 3. From the station, 4 minutes on foot.
⏱️ 90 minutes
For the highlights. Two hours if you also sit in the garden.
The Duchess’s villa
Villa Ilissia was built between 1840 and 1848, to designs by Stamatios Kleanthis, as the winter residence of the Duchess of Plaisance, Sophie de Marbois. The Duchess was one of the strangest figures in King Otto’s Athens: a French aristocrat, a philhellene, with houses scattered across Attica. The museum was founded in 1914 and moved here in 1930.
The courtyard with its loggias, fountain and cypresses still feels like a home. The big galleries, though, are not in the villa. They lie under the garden, in an underground wing you can’t see from the street. You go down a few steps and the museum opens up around you.
This is where you go in. The entrance is at number 22, between palm trees.
You pass under the arch and come out into the villa’s courtyard.
The winter residence of the Duchess of Plaisance, from 1840–1848.
Stamatios Kleanthis gave the villa the air of a Florentine mansion.
The villa at the back. The big galleries are under your feet.
Photos: Joyofmuseums (CC BY-SA 4.0), Jean Housen (CC BY-SA 4.0), Francesco Bini (CC BY-SA 4.0), George E. Koronaios (CC0) · Wikimedia Commons
The permanent exhibition
The museum holds about 30,000 objects, from the 3rd to the 20th century, from the whole world of Hellenism and the Eastern Church: Asia Minor, Cyprus, the Balkans, southern Italy. The exhibition is split into two large parts.
- From the Ancient World to Byzantium: how the motifs of late antiquity slowly pass into Christian art. Byzantine art doesn’t appear out of nowhere. It is worked out in workshops that inherit the Roman world. Then comes the great Byzantine world, with icons, frescoes, sculpture, silverware and manuscripts.
- From Byzantium to the Modern Era: the years after the Fall of Constantinople in 1453, the Cretan School under the Venetians, iconostases from churches all over the Greek world. At the end, a small section with 20th-century Greek painters who look back to Byzantium.
It’s not a museum for quick photos. Its strength lies in the small details: a gaze in an icon, a fragment of a fresco, a silver vessel that hands once held during a service.
The exhibition goes down level by level as you move forward in time.
The icons hang on panels in the middle of the room, so you can see their backs too.
Frescoes from churches that were demolished or flooded, set up again here.
Photos: Francesco Bini (CC BY-SA 4.0), John Samuel (CC BY-SA 4.0) · Wikimedia Commons
The works worth your time
- The mosaic Virgin Episkepsis: a Byzantine icon from Asia Minor, around 1300. The Virgin rests her cheek against the Child’s. Get close to see how tiny the tesserae are, then take two steps back. The face comes together differently from a distance.
- Saint George from Kastoria: a double-sided icon from the 13th century. The saint is not painted. He is carved in relief in the wood, which is rare in Byzantine art.
- The frescoes from Episkopi in Evrytania: they were detached from the church before the waters of Lake Kremasta covered it. They show what survives when a building is lost.
- The Archangel Michael: a 14th-century icon from Constantinople, with the fine brushwork of the capital.
A mosaic icon, around 1300. Get close to see the tiny tesserae.
A double-sided icon from the 13th century. The saint is carved in relief in the wood.
A 13th-century fresco from a small chapel in a cave on Mount Penteli.
A whole scene, detached from the wall of its church.
Photos: George E. Koronaios (CC BY-SA 4.0), Francesco Bini (CC BY-SA 4.0) · Wikimedia Commons
The garden
The garden is one of the reasons not to walk straight back out onto Vasilissis Sofias. It has shade, benches, herbs and, when it’s open, a café. After so many icons in low light, half an hour outside does you good. On the west side, right next to the museum, are the foundations of Aristotle’s Lyceum, with its entrance on Rigillis Street, where the philosopher taught while walking. It has its own ticket, €5.
Paths, herbs and benches between the villa and the galleries.
A place to sit after two hours with the icons.
In summer, the coolest spot around Vasilissis Sofias.
Photos: Jean Housen (CC BY-SA 4.0) · Wikimedia Commons
Tickets and opening hours 2026
| Days | Hours |
|---|---|
| Monday, Wednesday–Sunday | 8:30–15:30 |
| Tuesday | Closed |
| Good Friday | 12:00–17:00 |
The full ticket costs €8 and the reduced one €4. EU citizens under 25 and children from non-EU countries under 18 get in free, with an ID card or passport. Temporary exhibitions may have their own ticket. The guards start clearing the galleries 20 minutes before closing, so don’t arrive after 14:30.
The museum is closed on 1 January, 25 March, 1 May, Easter Sunday and on 25 and 26 December. Free for everyone: 6 March, 18 April, 18 May, the last weekend of September, 28 October, and from November to March the 1st and 3rd Sunday of every month. All the dates are in our calendar of free museum days.
🚇 How to get there from Ioulianou 50
The museum is at Vasilissis Sofias 22, across from Kolonaki. Allow about 25 minutes door to door.
- Ioulianou 50 → Victoria station: 3 minutes on foot.
- Line 1 (green), towards Piraeus: Omonia, and at the second stop get off at Monastiraki.
- Change to Line 3 (blue), towards Airport or Doukissis Plakentias: Syntagma, and get off at the second stop, Evangelismos.
- Evangelismos → museum: come out onto Vasilissis Sofias and walk 4 minutes towards the centre. The museum gate is on your left, right after the War Museum.
🚇 Ioulianou 50 → Byzantine Museum by metro
Line 1 to Monastiraki, Line 3 to Evangelismos, and 4 minutes on foot.
If you’d like a quieter route, get off at Syntagma and walk through the National Garden. It takes about 12 minutes, and in spring it’s the nicest way to the museum.
Where it is in relation to the apartment
📍 From Angels Athens to the Byzantine & Christian Museum
See at a glance how to get there from the apartment at Ioulianou 50. Drag the map and zoom in for details.
The Vasilissis Sofias museums on foot
Three museums and an archaeological site are a few minutes apart. Since the Byzantine Museum closes at 15:30, start there: the Byzantine at 8:30, a look at Aristotle’s Lyceum next door, then the Museum of Cycladic Art on Neofytou Douka Street, and in the afternoon the Benaki Museum, which stays open late. Three museums in one day is a lot. If you get tired, drop one and go to the National Garden.
🗺️ The Vasilissis Sofias museums, stop by stop
From Evangelismos station (M) to the Benaki it’s less than a kilometre. The purple line shows the order of the walk. Tap each number for the time and the ticket.
Comparisons
Byzantine Museum or Acropolis Museum?
They don’t compete. The Acropolis Museum ends the story of the Rock in late antiquity. The Byzantine Museum starts more or less there. Together they are the two ends of the same shelf.
Byzantine Museum or Benaki?
The Benaki is broader and tells more of a story, from antiquity to the 20th century. The Byzantine Museum focuses on Byzantine and post-Byzantine art and shows it in depth. If icons draw you in, the Byzantine Museum wins.
Frequently asked questions
Are the icons originals?
Yes, the works in the permanent exhibition are originals. If a particular piece interests you, the label gives the material, origin and date.
Is it for children?
It takes some choosing. The exhibition is dense. Keep the visit short, stop at the mosaics and the relief Saint George, and leave time for the garden.
Is it part of a combined ticket?
No. It has its own ticket, and the combined ticket for archaeological sites was abolished in April 2025. See our guide to the combined ticket.
Why does it close so early?
The 8:30–15:30 hours apply all year round. If you want a museum for the afternoon, keep the Benaki or the Museum of Cycladic Art for later.
— Kathy
