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P. Merakos
TINOS

The Museum of Marble Crafts

Get to know the history of marble, an art linked to the country's and the island's history from antiquity to the present day.

The Museum of Marble Crafts, in Pirgos village, on Tinos is a unique example presenting the technology of marble, a material that holds a particular place in the architecture and art of Greece and Tinos island, from antiquity through to the present.

Τhe permanent exhibition, which describes the intricate meshing of tools and techniques used in working marble in a detailed and live manner, puts an emphasis on the pre- and proto- industrial Tinos, the most important centre of marble crafts in Modern Greece. In parallel, it highlights the social and economic context that the local workshops evolved in.

While visiting the museum, you could see first hand an impressive number of authentic objects, such as secular, ecclesiastical, funerary and everyday objects made of marble (door lintels, fountains, family crests, corbels, shrines, mortars, etc.),  clay models and plaster of Paris copies, quarrying, cutting and carving tools, mechanical equipment, archival material, sketches of old marble carvings by master craftsmen (the richest collection in Greece).

The exhibits are flanked by interconnected representations of a quarry, of a marble-craft workshop and the assembly/positioning of a bishop's throne. The exhibition's audiovisual material brings to life the traditional work methods of the quarryman and the marble craftsman.

The exhibition extends into the museum's outdoor areas where, together with completed and semi-wrought marble works, you can see historical mechanical equipment that reflects typical images of in-situ working environments.

© PIOP, N. Daniilidis

© PIOP, N. Daniilidis

© PIOP, N. Daniilidis

© PIOP, N. Daniilidis

© PIOP, N. Daniilidis

© PIOP, N. Daniilidis

© PIOP, N. Daniilidis

© PIOP, N. Daniilidis

© PIOP, N. Daniilidis

© PIOP, N. Daniilidis

The Museum of Marble Crafts at Pyrgos on Tinos, the first of its kind in Greece, is part of a Network of thematic
Museums of technology created by the Piraeus Bank Group Cultural Foundation (PIOP).