Renovated Stoa of Attalos; New Digital Library Debuts

The new exhibition space of the upper floor of the Stoa of Attalos opened for the public on July 18th, 2012 while the eagerly awaited public re-inauguration is expected to take place this fall 2012. A project entitled “Reviving the Ancient Agora: The Cradle of Democracy” has given the upper floor a facelift and new exhibits have been installed there together with the existing ones that have been conserved and put on new bases.  Work has been overseen by ASCSA and the Ministry of Culture with 50% funding from the European Economic Area (EEA) and 50% from the Hellenic Ministry of Development, Competitiveness, and Shipping.  An exhibition in the upper colonnade now displays 56 sculptures constituting a significant collection of portraits of the Roman period.  Some have never previously been viewed by the public.

Another component of the project has been the digitization and annotation of some 390,000 archaeological records. Photographs, architectural drawings, notebooks,  3D-presentations of selected objects, and other materials from the Agora excavations are accessible to scholars, students, and the general public via www.agathe.gr. For a preview of how the digital library works, see the following short video. (Video note: there is no sound in this presentation; follow the on-screen cursor to understand how different archival data are linked to each other.)