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Exhibitions
| Description | | Exhibits |

The twilight of Byzantium: 1204-1453
 
Gold-embroidered epitaphios
This exhibition presents the last period in Byzantine history, which is marked by the fall of Constantinople first to the Franks (1204) and then to the Ottoman Turks (1453). This was a period of civil war, dire fiscal circumstances and gradual shrinking of the empire's territories, but, conversely, one of a great artistic and litterary floruit, especially in the two urban centres of Constantinople and Thessaloniki.

The exhibition, which occupies the museum's seventh room, is organized by subject. Its centerpiece is an exquisite liturgical cloth dated to c. AD 1300, the so-called 'Thessaloniki epitaphios'. Church decoration and furnishings, administration, and pottery and glass workshops are the other themes presented here. Instructive panels complete the display, part of which occupies the mezzanine in the centre of the room.
  
 
Author
D. Nalpantis, archaeologist
  
 

Exhibition Units
 
- Church decoration
This unit presents high quality sculptures and late fourteenth century wall-paintings characteristic of Thessaloniki.
- Church furnishings
The Thessaloniki epitaphios, a superb liturgical cloth of c. AD 1300, is the exhibition's centrepiece. Around it, the icons of Christ as 'Godly Wisdom' and of the Virgin Eleousa, and two relief marble icons, which continue the Middle Byzantine tradition, are exhibited. Manuscripts, liturgical gold-embroidered cloths and metal lamps complete the display.
- Funerary monuments
This unit presents objects of funerary use, which provide information on both the funerary practices and art of this period. It includes funerary inscriptions, relief funerary plaques, ceramic and glass vessels, jewelry, remains of garments, the monolithic sarcophagus of the archbishop of Ochrid Theodoros Kerameus and part of a funerary monument discovered inside the church of St. Sophia in Thessaloniki.
- Administration
This display of coins and lead seals illustrates the mints of the Paleologues and particularly those of Thessaloniki, which display great variety and originality.
- Ceramic workshops, glazed pottery and glass production
The revival of glass manufacture in Thessaloniki and the city's commercial links with Venice and the Islamic East are illustrated through a series of glass vases. On the mezzanine, the glazed pottery production centres of Macedonia and Thrace are illustrated through the remains of pottery workshops and characteristic vases, mostly from excavations in Thessaloniki, Serres and Mikro Pisto in Rodopi.