Museum of Greek Folk Musical Instruments

This museum in the Plaka district of Athens, near the Roman Agora, is three floors of aesthetically and ethnologically valuable instruments housed in an old mansion. The collection’s existence is largely thanks to the research of musicologist Fivos Anoyanakis. 

In 1978, Anoyanakis donated his collection of around 1,200 musical instruments and other sound-emitting objects, to the Greek State. That collection was turned into a museum, which opened in 1991. The instruments on display are divided up by type and material. There are idiophones (instruments that create sound by vibrating themselves), aerophones (instruments that make sound by pushing vibrating columns of air), membranophones (instruments that use the vibrations of a stretched membrane to create noise), and more. 

In the second building, visitors can find the research center, archives and storerooms, a lecture hall, and a museum shop.