The Ecclesiastical Museum of the Holy Mertopolis of Thessaloniki provides a different experience to either cathedral treasury or an art gallery, combining elements of both with
a theological grounding seldom found either.

Javier Pes
MUSEUM PRACTICE Winter 2007

[...]the focus is stricly an the icons and symbolism af the Orthodox Church: nearly 200 gilded and Stylised icons, often made by an anonymous master craftsperson. Hence no melodramatic Caravaggios or muscular Michaelangelos, wich to orthodox eyes are far too human representations of the Body of Christ. The Museum is tiny, smaller than most village churches...

[...]the space includes a small display of richly-emboroidered clerical robes, all velvet and gold brocade. Daroquely decorated, they would look at home in an Italian or Spanish cathedral.
The wedding crowns worn by the typically Greek, however. A chalice confirms that looting is an age-old problem; an inscription on one from 1692 reads: "May anyone who tries to remove it from the monastery be cursed by Christ, the Mother of God an St Anastasia."

Typefaces

LocoRigas

Typography Eugen Trattner, Vienna 1790.
Wooden carved type from the book of Rigas Velestinlis.
(fysikhs apanthisma)

New Hellenic

The font was designed by Victor Scholderer and was distributed by Monotype at 1927. Based on the first Renaissance wood carved types, the font was chosen for the museum's texts, because it is legible and gives the sense of the first Renaissance books. Byzantine capitals and hand written byzantine calligraphic types were avoided because of their Illegibility.

[...]Reproduced on the floor is a drawing of the city in the style of a woodcut.
In a neat design touch, the image abuts another of the city in the 19th century.

[...]The space still has to function as a thoroughfare, but the displays speak loudest.
[...] more inportantly the museum shows the value of looking at religious art in terms of its spiritual content, not just its formal qualities - whether an arch is gothic or not.

Javier Pes
MUSEUM PRACTICE Winter 2007

Museological Concept:
Prof. Matoula Skaltsa

Exhibition and Lighting Design:
Prof P. Tzonos
Dipl. Ing. Arch. G. Heupel

Print-Graphic Design:
LineaDesign (Kostas Petridis, Peter Petridis)

Lighting Consultant:
Diathlasis S. A.