Archaeological Museum of Chania, Chaniá, Greece

The Archaeological Museum of Chania was established in 1962. to the house built probably in the 1500s. It served as a Venetian church inhabited by Franciscan monks, and became an important monument of the city.

During the period of the Ottoman occupation, the building was used as a mosque and named after Yussuf Pasha, the conqueror of Chania. At the turn of the 20th century it became the cinema and after World War II it served as a storehouse for military equipment, until it was converted into the museum in 1962. The archaeological collection of Chania itself was formerly housed in various public buildings such as the Residency, the Boys’ High School, and the Hassan Mosque.

References:

Wikipedia

Museums in Greece

User Reviews

Anastasios Gounaris (9 months ago)
Unforgivable that the Chania Archaeological Museum has been closed for a year and a half in preparation for its opening at its new Halepa location. A perfect example of Greek bureaucratic incompetence and bungling. Couldn’t this move have been coordinated better??? And yet its sad little gift shop continues to limp along at its old location. It also remains to be seen whether any tourists will ever be able to find the Museum at its new location.

Ana Maria Riquel (2 years ago)
Fairly interesting, I expected to see a bit more but the building itself is great and the outside area was fantastic. Entrance 4 euros, there is a toilet too.

Tony Coppola (3 years ago)
The museum itself is very small and the wealth of contents limited, though it is a worthy stop if you're in Chania: there are a couple of interesting roman mosaics and the roman glass collection is very good. Some of the pieces cannot be photographed (about 30% of the collection) as they claim they have not been published yet! The museum attendant only let somebody know when a person attempt to take a photograph of those items with a snotty remark "read the small printed description"! A better deterrent would be to put a red A5 sign "do not photograph"! All in all it is about average!

Judæ ! (3 years ago)
It's really amazing to see the ancient stone and structures

Alex hill (3 years ago)
Nice, small museum in former Venetian church. Translations in English are good. Mainly Greek pottery with a small amount of Roman finds. Worth it with an interest in the subject; however for the regular tourist not the most interesting exhibition.

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With 8,000 pipes, the organ is reputed to be the largest pipe organ in France, surpassing the organs of Saint Sulpice and Notre Dame de Paris. The organ originally constructed by P.-A. Ducroquet was powerful enough for the premiere of Hector Berlioz" titanic Te Deum to be performed at St-Eustache in 1855.

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