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2018-2019

Museum Study / Exhibition Design

 

 

WORKING GROUP

Ifigenia Dimitriou (Architect Engineer-Museologist), Asimina Grigoriou (Archaeologist-Museologist)

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Ernst Ziller’s residence, designed by him, was built in 1882-1885. It is a typical bourgeois residence in the Neapoli area, with a basement, an elevated ground-floor and a main floor, representative of the late Athenian neoclassicism. Ziller was keeping there his office and his drawing room. The house became a pole of attraction for the high and intellectual society of the late 19th century.

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The Ziller family stayed there until 1912, when, for economic reasons, the house was auctioned off and a few years later it was transferred to the Cephalonian banker Dionysios Loverdos.

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Dionysios Loverdos had in his possession a remarkable collection of Byzantine and post-Byzantine icons, dating from the 14th to the 20th century. The collection includes works by important painters of the Cretan and Ionian School and by representatives of the 20th century. Around 1930, Dionysios Loverdos, turned a part of the house into a museum and thus founded the first private museum of byzantine art. Since 1980, the Loverdos Collection has been handed over by his heirs to the Byzantine and Christian Museum, which is responsible for the re-exhibition of the Collection in the residence.

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The purpose of the museological and museographic study is to create a museum that will highlight the history and architecture of the building, respecting its morphology, will focus on the two main personalities, Ernst Ziller and Dionysios Loverdos and will exhibit an important part of the Loverdos Collection.