Written by One Kriviciute
With thousands of years of history and hundreds of islands, it is impossible to visit all the wonders of Greece to be able to see all its art. Before traveling to Greece, it is important to decide what you want to see, because it is easy to get lost in such richness of culture.
Of course, our present-day world has adopted many features from past eras, and today, we are accompanied and surrounded by different forms of antiquity from all sides in our everyday life. You don’t need to look far for influence from the past. Just if we look at the simplest houses standing on the streets, we will soon notice many details borrowed from Ancient Greece. The culture of Ancient Greece is closer to us than in the earlier and later eras. Ancient Greece culture can be called the grounds of Europe, for its culture to grow. To just get familiarized with Greece art, it is enough to visit a larger museum and you will find works of ancient Greece art there. But to get to know and understand Greece art deeper, then it’s time to travel around Greece itself.
To get to know Greek art, it is best to visit The Epigraphical Museum of Athens, which is one of the largest Greek museums. The Epigraphic Museum of Athens is the third largest museum of ancient inscriptions in the world, and it has a collection of over fourteen thousand inscriptions, mostly from Greece, that cover the period from early historical times to the Late Roman era. The museum aims to safeguard, protect, conserve, display and promote the epigraphical collections that it contains. Thanks to the wide variety of subjects of ancient Greek inscriptions, the visitor to the Museum of Epigraphy can get acquainted with all aspects of ancient life, from the details of personal life to the most important aspects of public life and politics, and, of course, art.
When visiting Athens, it is important not to forget to visit the National Gallery – Alexandra Soutsos Museum, as it is the most important museum of Greek art history. Today, the National Gallery’s collections include more than 20,000 works of art. Many art forms are exhibited chronologically, including paintings, sculptures, engravings, drawings, and many other varieties. It is a treasure trove of modern Greek art, spanning the period from post- Byzantine times to the present day. The permanent exhibition of the National Gallery includes many paintings of the Renaissance era and works of Greek and European painters of the 17th-20th centuries.
Needless to say, the world of Greek art and culture did not end in the most famous times of antiquity, in Greece this world is still alive today. One of the best examples of this is the Street Mode Festival, one of the biggest street culture festivals in Greece. Since 2009 it
has taken place every September in the port city of Thessaloniki, Greece. The Street Mode Festival originally started as a series of events held in open public spaces such as Thermi Square and the Port of Thessaloniki. The festival’s vision is to show today’s subculture through art forms such as graffiti and breakroom, through sports such as skateboarding, BMX and parkour, and through music genres such as hip-hop, rock, and ethnic. Every year more than 500 artists from Greece and abroad participate in festival events. The festival’s vision is to present all kinds of street cultures in one celebration. The festival is like the Olympics, but for street culture, it is a place and a time where all aspects of street culture meet at once, three days of live music, street art, street dancing, and action sports, to celebrate street culture and art.
Greek art, like the history of the country itself, is old and full of a great legacy. The legacy of Greek culture follows us every day, especially those living in Europe. From architecture, literature, works of art, sculptures, great philosophers, and politics, which gave us democracy, Greek influence follows us in everyday life, therefore, when coming to Greece, it is necessary to familiarize yourself with both its past culture and the current Greek cultural life