Collections of the Numismatic Museum
Collections of the Numismatic Museum
On the second floor, the journey through history really gets rolling. Get a glance from Roman and Byzantine Era finds to the last century and the start of the new Euro currency.
1st Floor
The room is dedicated to the history of the Iliou Melathron, and the private coin collection of Heinrich Schliemann, the "father of Mycenaean archaeology", and his love for antiquity.
Exhibition Features:
- origins of coinage, its manufacturing technique and the spread of its use (in the Hesperides Hall)
- turtles of Aegina (6th Century)
- foals of Corinth
- owls of Athens (first coins issued in Greece)
- hoards (offer important information on coin circulation & economy in many regions of the ancient Greek world)
2nd Floor
The history of coins continue here. Roman and Byzantine coins are on display here. Also, a small sample of modern foreign coins is displayed in the room number 4. The sixth room contains coins and medals of the new Greek State (after 1821). In the last room of this floor one can see the Greek coins pounds of the period of the inflation during the Second World War.
Exhibition Features:
- denarii, aureii, sestertii, solidi, follies-of gold, silver or copper
- solidus (basic numismatic unit of the Byzantine monetary system)
- weights
- lead bullae
- first Arab coins (succeeded the silver coinage of the Persian kingdom of the Sasanians)
- mid-8th Century, caliphates and small states minted gold, silver and copper coins
- coinages of the great European states and their colonies
- issues of the Numismatic Unions and the independent countries
- nickel coins & paper notes up until the 2nd half of the 20th Century
- plastic and immaterial Money
- coins of the great European powers and the Ottoman empire circulating in the region
- phoenices issued by Ioannis Kapodistrias in 1828 (the first national coins of the Modern Greek state)
- The drachma, (the basis of the Greek monetary system until its replacement by the Euro in 2002). The Modern history of Greece was portrayed on the gold, silver and copper coins as well as on paper Money.
