Museum of Cycladic Art
Photo: Own work — Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
The Museum of Cycladic Art in Athens houses over 3,000 artifacts from the Cyclades, Cyprus, and Ancient Greece, spanning from the 4th millennium BC to the 6th century AD.
Planning your visit
Cycladic figurines look startlingly modern — flat marble figures, usually female, arms folded across the body, faces reduced to a nose, made in the islands between roughly 3200 and 2000 BC. Picasso, Brancusi and Modigliani all responded to them, and the resemblance to twentieth-century sculpture is not coincidental: they were rediscovered and admired precisely as modernism was developing.
The Museum of Cycladic Art holds the finest collection of them, assembled by Nicholas and Dolly Goulandris and opened in 1986, alongside ancient Greek and Cypriot antiquities across some 3,000 objects.
Nothing is known with confidence about what the figurines were for — grave goods, deities, ancestors, dolls — and the museum is honest about that, which is preferable to the confident interpretation such objects often attract.
The building is elegant, the display is calm, and it is far less crowded than the Acropolis Museum. It sits in Kolonaki. Allow ninety minutes. The main booking is an entry ticket. Current availability is shown below.
Before you book
Where is Museum of Cycladic Art?
Museum of Cycladic Art is in Athens, Greece. The map on this page marks its exact location.
How long should I allow for Museum of Cycladic Art?
Allow ninety minutes. That is the time the collection itself takes at an unhurried pace, before any queue.
Do I need to book Museum of Cycladic Art in advance?
Tickets can be bought on the door at quiet times, but booking ahead fixes the date and avoids the queue at busy ones. Live availability is shown on this page.
