The History Museum of Armenia will open “Ancient Armenia” at the Acropolis Museum in Athens on November 19, sending more than 170 artifacts from its collection to one of the most visited museums in the world, which drew nearly 2 million visitors in 2025. The exhibition is the first in a new Acropolis Museum series on ancient civilizations, and it will stay up until the spring of 2027.
Nzhdeh Yeranyan, deputy scientific director of the History Museum of Armenia, gave the date and the figure to Armenpress.
“We will exhibit more than 170 objects from our collection at the prestigious Acropolis Museum for three months,” Yeranyan said.
The exhibition traces Armenia from the Stone Age to the adoption of Christianity, and it takes in relations between Armenia and Greece in antiquity. An illustrated book will be published alongside it.
The Acropolis Museum has said the show will bring together about 200 antiquities in its temporary exhibitions gallery.
The objects traveling from Yerevan include a silver ceremonial battle axe from the 23rd to 22nd century BC and a gold spoon from the 1st century BC, along with finds from Lchashen, Tolors, Karashamb, Sisian and Artashat. The Greek side is contributing a bronze shield from the 7th century BC, found in the Idaean Cave on Crete and held by the Archaeological Museum of Heraklion.
The museum’s own description of the exhibition runs from the Paleolithic through the Bronze Age, the Early Iron Age, and the Archaic, Classical, Hellenistic and Roman periods, to the arrival of Christianity in the 4th century, with particular weight given to Urartu.
The Two Museums Signed the Agreement During Khachaturyan’s State Visit
Davit Poghosyan, director of the History Museum of Armenia, and Nikolaos Stampolidis, director general of the Acropolis Museum, signed a memorandum of cooperation at the Acropolis Museum on February 19, during President Vahagn Khachaturyan’s state visit to Greece.
Poghosyan called the memorandum an important achievement. What the two sides announced then was an exhibition of more than 100 pre-Christian objects opening in the fall, so the show that opens next month is considerably larger than the one first described.
The memorandum also provides for an exchange of professional experience between the two institutions.
Armenian Collections Are on Show in Nicosia and Yerevan at the Same Time
“Faith and Identity: Relics from the History Museum of Armenia” opened on October 9 at the Byzantine Museum of the Archbishop Makarios III Foundation in Nicosia, with 4 objects representing Armenian ecclesiastical art and state tradition.
The exhibition was built around an Armenian Gospel from the Monastery of Saint Macarius, which is permanently displayed at the Byzantine Museum with the consent of the Armenian Diocese of Cyprus.
In Yerevan, “Ani: The Thousand and One Afterlives of a Medieval Armenian Capital” opened at the History Museum of Armenia on October 6, with artifacts from the Ani archaeological site alongside archival photographs, artworks and documentaries, some shown for the first time. Ani, the medieval Armenian capital, sits in historic Western Armenia.
Its partners include the Leibniz Institute for the History and Culture of Eastern Europe in Leipzig, Freie Universität Berlin and the Armenian Studies department at Pázmány Péter Catholic University in Budapest.
The museum has also worked with the British Museum on “Mother Goddess: From Anahit to Mary” and with the Louvre on “Sacred Dialogues,” and it opened a joint exhibition with Berlin’s Museum Island in Yerevan in recent weeks.
“These exhibitions are very important not only for broadening visitors’ horizons but also for cultural diplomacy,” Yeranyan said.
