Byzantine Museum of Kastoria
The Byzantine Museum of Kastoria is a museum in Kastoria, Macedonia, Greece, dedicated to religious art from the area's late Byzantine and post-Byzantine periods.
Description
The museum stands at the highest point of the city, in Dexamenis Square, next to the Monuments Museum. It has been open since 1989. It has a collection of some 700 icons from the city's 75 Byzantine and post-Byzantine churches, and almost all of them have been restored and cleaned by the museum's conservators. Of this large collection, 35 icons are on permanent display. They date to the 12th to 17th centuries and are divided into six groups on the basis of their age and the atelier which produced them.The most important icons are of: Elijah in the severe Comnenian style; St. Nicholas on a silver ground and surrounded by ten scenes from his life; Christ Pantocrator ; Saints Cosmas and Damian ; the Panagia Glykofiloussa and the Deposition from the Cross ; the Man of Sorrows ; an altar door bearing a depiction of the Annunciation and busts of David and Solomon at the top; the Annunciation ; the Christ Pantocrator painted by a well-known icon-painter named Ioannis Permeniotis; the Panagia Hodegetria ; and the Dormition of St Nicholas. In the semicircular part of the exhibition space are displayed three outstanding works by Kastorian ateliers: an icon of St. Paraskevi carrying her own head, and two altar doors with a representation of the Annunciation.
Until 1998, the museum ran an educational program for ten- to seventeen-year-olds titled "In the World of Byzantine Icons", and one of its aims for 2000 is to resume the program. It involved a guided tour of the museum and a detailed account of the stages of the making of an icon, accompanied by related activities and games.