It is one of the most important museums in Athens that you should definitely visit. It was established by the patrician Ant. Benakis (1873-1954) and inaugurated in 1931.
The group of collections comprises many distinct categories totalling more than 40,000 items, illustrating the character of the Greek world through a spectacular historical panorama: from antiquity and the age of Roman domination to the medieval Byzantine period; from the fall of Constantinople (1453) and the centuries of Frankish and Ottoman occupation to the outbreak of the struggle for independence in 1821; and from the formation of the modern state of Greece (1830) down to 1922, the year in which the Asia Minor disaster took place.