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Aegean Maritime Museum
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When:
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Daily; not Mon
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Where:
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Aegean Maritime Museum
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| Opening Hours: |
Tue-Sun 8.30am-3pm
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The Aegean Maritime Museum aims to preserve, promote and study Greek maritime history and tradition, and in particular the evolution and activities of the merchant ship, chiefly in the historic region of the Aegean Sea.
The museum is housed in a traditional 19th-century Mykonian building. Exhibits include models of ships from the pre-Minoan period to the beginning of the 20th century, historical shipping documents, rare engravings and maps, ancient artifacts, navigational instruments, equipment and tools, as well as a collection of rare coins with nautical subjects from the 5th century BC to the 5th century AD.
The museum's library has more than 5000 volumes of rare books and more recent editions, as well as archives of manuscripts and photographs, and is constantly updated to include additional archival material and new scholarship in relevant subjects. The garden has reproductions of ancient marble gravestones from the islands of Myconos and Delos, dealing with shipwrecks and sailors who were lost at sea.
The museum was also the first in Greece that rescued and restored living historical exhibits to operate as they were originally designed and built, including the Armenistis lighthouse (built in 1890), the "perama" type sailing ship Evangelistria (built in 1940) and the cable-laying ship Thalis o Milesios (built in 1909).
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