Xenokrateion Archaeological Museum of the Sacred City of Messolongi: Following the flow of the Acheloos River

This great life-giving river is the starting point of the fascinating narrative of the Xenokrateion Archaeological Museum, which was inaugurated in 2021.

Besides tracing human activity in Aetolia-Acarnania, the Xenokrateion Museum houses important finds uncovered during both earlier and more recent excavations, many of which are presented to the public for the first time.

One of the most important and rarest exhibits, a burial assemblage that once again brings Homer to the forefront, came from the cemetery of Stamna to the north of the Aetoliko lagoon. It consists of three bronze cauldrons dating from the Proto-Geometric period (1050-900 BC), which contained burials wrapped in cloth. The use of fabrics in funerary rituals is featured prominently in the Iliad, but very few remains of textiles have been salvaged to this day. On the coastal zone of Aetolia, are located the five oldest towns to have participated in the Trojan campaign (Pleuron, Calydon, Chalcis, Pylene and Olenus), with the corresponding finds displayed according to the Homeric course of the Museum’s narrative.

It’s worth mentioning that the majority of the collection’s nearly 1,200 objects are displayed for the first time in the seven halls of the Xenokrateion Museum, a listed 19th century building that used to be an all-girls primary school, and  has been remodelled to fulfill the educational and recreational role of the keeper of a diachronic cultural treasure.