The Museum of Marble Crafts at Pyrgos on Tinos, the first of its kind in Greece, was created and is operated by the Piraeus Bank Group Cultural Foundation (PIOP). The Museum presents the technology of marble, a material that holds a special place in the art and architecture of Greece, from antiquity to the present day. Alongside the emphasis placed on pre-industrial and proto-industrial Tinos, the most important centre of marble working in modern Greece, the social and economic milieu in which the local workshops developed is enhanced.
The rich collection of diverse authentic objects exhibited in the museum is combined with interlinked reconstructions of a quarry and a marble-carving workshop. Concurrently, these two basic units are accompanied by audio-visual material specially created for the permanent exhibition. The immediacy of the dialogue between image and exhibits offers visitors a vivid and comprehensible picture of procedures relating to the extracting, first processing and transporting of marble blocks (quarry), as well as the forming and decorating of marble artifacts (workshop). Thus, the course from the raw material to the finished product, through the nexus of tools and techniques, is more easily understood, reinforcing the museum experience.
- Direction: COSTAS MAHAIRAS, PANAYIOTIS OIKONOMOPOULOS
