Political Exile Museum In Athens

On discovering that there was a political exhile museum in Athens, Dave from Dave's Travel Pages immediately wanted to find out more.  

Political exhiles?  What was this all about? As he researched, Dave learned that there is a little known part of modern Greek history that even many Greeks do not know about. Keep reading...

Dave's ongoing project to visit all the museums in Athens has led him to some interesting places.  Some have been essential to visit, like the National Archeological Museum. Others have been educational on a much deeper level, like the Tactual Museum of Athens.  Some are shocking, such as the Political Exile Museum. Let's start with some context:

Modern Greece as we know it has existed for less than 200 years.  During this period, it has endured Balkan War, two World Wars, civil war and a dictatorship.  As one can imagine, whoever was in charge at the time used a variety of methods to keep in power.  One of these was by internal political exile to the Greek islands.

From 1926 to 1967, many of the Greek islands were used to house political prisoners. They would generally be people that had opposing political views to those in power. They might include politicians, military figures, and activists, but also poets and artists. The most significant numbers of people exiled, occurred during and directly after the civil war period of 1946 to 1949.

There is a strange absence of information available to the public about the civil war period. Certainly, there is no specific museum dedicated to this. So, when I discovered that there was not one, but two political exile museums in Athens, I knew I had to visit. The museums are actually next door to each other at 31, Agion Asomaton Street 10553 Keramikos, Athens. They have really short opening hours, which are between 11.00 and 14.30 so it might be worth calling ahead to make sure they are open.

To read more, please visit: Dave's Travel Pages