The Folklore Museum of Edessa (

Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...

: Λαογραφικό Μουσείο Έδεσσας) is located in the city of in

Edessa Edessa (; grc, Ἔδεσσα, Édessa) was an ancient city (''polis'') in Upper Mesopotamia, founded during the Hellenistic period by King Seleucus I Nicator (), founder of the Seleucid Empire. It later became capital of the Kingdom of Osroene ...

in Macedonia,

Greece Greece,, or , romanized: ', officially the Hellenic Republic, is a country in Southeast Europe. It is situated on the southern tip of the Balkans, and is located at the crossroads of Europe, Asia, and Africa. Greece shares land borders with ...

. It was founded twenty years ago on the initiative of the local Alexander the Great Association. It has recently passed into the hands of the Municipality of Edessa. Following an anthropological and ethnographical study carried out by Prof. Nora Skouteri of the

Aristotle University of Thessaloniki Aristotle (; grc-gre, Ἀριστοτέλης ''Aristotélēs'', ; 384–322 BC) was a Greek philosopher and polymath during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. Taught by Plato, he was the founder of the Peripatetic school of phil ...

, the museum was re-organised and opened its doors to the public again in September 1998 in a new two-storey building at 10 Megalou Alexandrou Street, donated for the purpose by the Sivenas family (Costas & Tana Sivenas).

Exhibits

The museum owns and displays permanent collections of artefacts of the folk culture of the Edessa area. On the ground floor, visitors may see artefacts, implements, and photographs relating to agriculture, stockbreeding, weaving (a very impressive entire loom), sericulture, and candlemaking. (

Sericulture Sericulture, or silk farming, is the cultivation of silkworms to produce silk. Although there are several commercial species of silkworms, ''Bombyx mori'' (the caterpillar of the domestic silkmoth) is the most widely used and intensively studie ...

and the silk industry were highly developed in Edessa until the 1960s.) On the first floor are local costumes, as worn by townspeople and, mainly, by rural folk from the local mountain villages. The exhibits on the second floor illustrate the lifecycle of the local people, from birth through marriage to death. The museum also intends to hold temporary exhibitions on specific themes.

Gallery

File:Macedonian_Museums-49-Laografiko_Edessas-218.jpg, Wedding dress File:Macedonian_Museums-49-Laografiko_Edessas-219.jpg, Traditional costume

References

Sources

* {{Museums of Macedonia, http://www.museumsofmacedonia.gr/Folklore/Laografiko_Edessas.html

Museums in Edessa, Greece