When we read the news that Greece’s most exceptional museums would be keeping their Winter hours, we didn’t believe it. But since April 1st, all the country’s museums, monuments, and archaeological sites have been unable to hire many seasonal staff they need, in order to fully open several iconic showplaces for Greek antiquities.
Five significant museums will not be adequately staffed this season, and half their rooms will be closed to visitors. The museums are the National Archaeological Museum, the Archaeological Museum of Thessaloniki, the Archaeological Museum of Heraklion, the Byzantine & Christian Museum of Athens and the Museum of Byzantine Culture of Thessaloniki.
These museums currently need archaeological staff (mainly caretakers and cleaners) to meet the increased visitation during peak season adequately. As far as we are aware, this is the first time such delinquency has occurred in decades. With more tourists heading to Greece than ever, most of the most popular and intriguing museums will fail in their mission to educate and reveal the glorious heirlooms of a once great civilization.
According to the announcement, the Pancretian Union of Graduate Archaeologists (P.E.Pt.A.) has addressed both the General Director of the Archaeological Museum of Heraklion and Ioakeim Gryspolakis (at left from YouTube), who is the President of the Board of Directors of the Museum. Of course, these officials immediately started the blame game, attempting to lay the staffing disaster on the Ministry of the Interior.
Readers may recall that the museum operation in Heraklion was passed on to a special board by the Culture Ministry in February of 2023.
On this note, Gryspolakis is notorious for allegedly intimidating students and professors to refrain from mobilizations and the trade union bodies on Crete. If half the Heraklion Archaeological Museum rooms are closed, the person most responsible would seem to be the former rector of the Technical University of Crete.
The Minister of Culture, Lina Mendoni, assured the union and the public she would do everything possible to mediate the situation. However, since the control of these museums is now in the hands of independent boards, it seems unlikely she will be able to come through. The union and all those interested have expressed amazement that governmental ministries have yet to manage an embarrassing and monumentally damaging situation. Less than a year after the passage of the “modernization of museum policy,” the bureaucrats of Europe’s banana republic cannot even hire cleaners to dust the ancient relics of Greek civilization.
Minister Mendoni (at right with Governor Arnautakis) , who has been in this position the last five years (and for two decades as General Secretary), was in Crete most recently on what amounted to a photo op at Knossos with Crete Governor Stavros Arnautakis and the mayor of Heraklion, Alexis Kalokairinos. This back-slapping gathering had to do with the ultimate inclusion of Knossos Minoan Palace/Temple on the UNESCO list of our planet’s most meaningful places. Few realize it, but Knossos has been on the tentative list for UNESCO inclusion for decades. Recently, several other sites on Crete, and Knossos, we resubmitted for inclusion. This is another story, but this author has written volumes about the circuitous nonsense that’s kept Greece’s oldest palatial sites in historical limbo.
We were most amused by Governor Arnautakis’ statement, which was offered via press release.
We are making a visionary, realistic plan for Knossos always under the instructions of the Minister of Culture Lina Mendoni and the Services of the Ministry, in cooperation with the Mayor of Heraklion and our services. I believe that we can achieve the goal, of the inclusion of Knossos and the rest of the Minoan palaces in the UNESCO list.
We last covered the Knossos/UNESCO situation five years ago. We were assured that work on “a plan” to submit to UNECO was being undertaken at that time. Few realize that Knossos was submitted by the Permanent Delegation of Greece to UNESCO in 2003. Over the years, I’ve been in contact with several individuals from UNESCO and the various Greek ministries. My impression, and that of some experts on the matter of antiquities, is that all these people ever really manage to accomplish is to plan, for making a plan, to plan, for ultimately doing something. Five years, and only now the leadership of Greece recognizes it’s time to work together? Ironically, Spain was granted its 50th UNESCO World Heritage Site two years ago.
Given that the Interior and Culture ministries of Greece cannot sweep and mop the floors of the country’s most valuable cultural and tourist attractions – well, you get the point. I think that soon, very soon, tourists will be issued flashlights to explore these museums because the Banana Pudding Republic will be too broke to pay the light bills.
Stay tuned, in case you live long enough, for the great and powerful of Greece to accomplish employment and planning miracles.