Museo de Chipre

The Cyprus Museum (also known as the Cyprus Archaeological Museum) is the oldest and largest archaeological museum in Cyprus. The museum houses artefacts discovered during numerous excavations on the island. The museum is home to the most extensive collection of Cypriot antiquities in the world and is located on Museum Street in central Nicosia.

The initial museum was funded by private donations and was temporarily housed in existing governmental offices. It moved to its own premises in 1889 on Victoria Street within the medieval walls of the city. Construction of the current building began in 1908 and was originally dedicated to the memory of the British monarch, Queen Victoria.

It was designed by the architect N. Balanos of the Archaeological Society of Athens and construction was supervised by George H. Everett Jeffery then curator of the museum. In 1961 a second set of galleries, storerooms and offices was completed. Soon after its inception, the museum started receiving items from the numerous excavations on the island, mainly run by British and European expeditions. Indicative are the annual excavation reports published in The Journal of Hellenic Studies from 1890 onwards. The first organised catalogue was soon compiled and published in 1899 by Sir John Myres and Max M. Ohnefalsch-Richter.

The collections of the museum were greatly augmented by the first large scale systematic excavations carried out by the Swedish Cyprus Expedition between 1927 and 1931 under the direction of professor Einar Gjerstad. Today, the Cyprus Museum remains the principal show-piece for finds preceding independence (1960). It also houses the most important recent acquisitions. Recent years have seen a progressive decentralization of Cyprus's museum collections and most finds from current excavations are deposited in the local district museums.

The museum consists of fourteen display halls surrounding a square central area which comprises auxiliary offices, a library, storerooms and laboratories for preserving and studying items in the collection. The displays in each hall follow a chronological and a thematical succession starting from the Neolithic period and ending with the Roman period. The museum collection has far outgrown the capacity of the existing buildings so much so that only a small fraction is on display at any point in time. With several ongoing excavations and constant new finds, the issue of relocation to more spacious premises has been raised but a suitable site has yet to be decided on. There have been suggestions that the nearby and now demolished building of the Nicosia Old General Hospital be redeveloped, whilst there have also been plans to create a new museum as part of a new larger cultural centre at the site of the old GSP stadium.

Fuente de la descripción: wikipedia

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Categoría definición de categoría museo
Material definición de material
stone
Precio definiciones de precios
Coordenadas geográficas 35.1716670, 33.3552780
Dirección Nicosia, Mouseiou
Fechas de construcción 1908 -
Fecha de apertura 1882
Más información página web oficial

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