War Museum

About this place

Greece's national army museum, in a Brutalist concrete building of the 1970s on Vasilissis Sofias, between the Benaki Museum and the Museum of Cycladic Art. Its span is very wide: it begins with the **wars of ancient Greece** — weapons, armour and models of Marathon, Salamis and Thermopylae — passes through the Byzantines and Ottoman rule, then the nineteenth-century **Greek war of independence** with its arms, banners and portraits of its leaders. Its strongest sections concern the **twentieth century**: the Balkan wars, the First World War, then the **Second World War**, which occupies a large area — the Greek resistance, the occupation, and the great famine in Athens in the winter of 1941–42, in which tens of thousands starved. In the **outdoor courtyard** are fighter aircraft, guns and tanks you can walk up to and inspect closely — and that part is **free and open**, and children love it in particular. ⚠ The indoor display is **conventional and text-heavy** and has not been fully modernised — don't expect an interactive museum.