MUSEUM PIERIDES

This private archaeological museum (Μουσείο Πιερίδη/Mousio Pieridi) contains some amazing artifacts. Opened in 1974, it is managed by the Pierides Foundation and the Cyprus Bank Foundation. It is housed in a beautiful villa dating from 1815, whose style is reminiscent of New Orleans. The collection was built up by Demetrios Pierides (1811-1895), a Greek Cypriot nobleman with a passion for epigraphy. Room 1 covers the period from the Palaeolithic to the emergence of cities. Polished stones from the Chirokitia site (7000-3800 B.C.), cruciform figurines (3900-2500 B.C.) and the enigmatic "Screaming Man", a large (36 cm) Chalcolithic statuette of a seated man, mouth wide open and sex with orifice. Was it a cry of liberation, pain or pleasure? One thing is certain: when a liquid flows into the mouth, it comes out through the penis... Then there are Bronze Age figurines (plank women, an intertwined couple...), a female statuette with curly hair that could represent Astarte, an oriental divinity prefiguring Aphrodite. Note also the "goddess with raised arms", inspired by Minoan art. Room 2 is devoted to the Classical period (480-310 BC): Assyro-Palestinian vases and pitchers decorated with birds, Greek ceramics with red figures, a series of modeled or sculpted heads. Room 3 houses temporary exhibitions. The last two feature glass objects from the Roman period, followed by Byzantine, Frankish and Venetian glazed ceramics.