Museum of Ancient, Byzantine Musical Instruments

The Museum of Ancient, Byzantine and Post-Byzantine Musical Instruments in Oia displays handmade replicas of instruments played in the Greek world from about 2800 BC to the early 20th century. The collection belongs to Christodoulos Halaris, a Greek musicologist, composer, and conductor, who built the replicas from pictorial and written evidence such as ancient pottery, sculpture, figurines, and illuminated Byzantine manuscripts. Some of the reconstructions were made in cooperation with the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki.

The museum occupies the old community building of Oia on Eleftheriou Venizelou, close to the main pedestrian walkway through the village. Instruments hang over life-size wall paintings of musicians holding them, so you can see how each one was played, and push-button audio lets you hear what several of them sound like. Look for the seven-stringed phorminx from the Minoan period, the 5th-century BC double pipes with an air chamber, and the tsampouna bagpipes once played on the Greek islands, by Black Sea Greeks, and in Thrace.

Before moving to Santorini, the collection was shown from 1997 until 2010 in a restored three-storey building at Katouni 12–14 in the Ladadika district of Thessaloniki, where it filled three exhibition spaces with more than 200 instruments. The Oia museum opened in October 2011. Older guides that place the museum in Thessaloniki are out of date, and the Katouni address is now listed as permanently closed.

Opening hours are irregular, so plan ahead:

• One island guide lists daily hours of 10:00–14:00 and 18:00–22:00, but other sources say visits are arranged on request, so call +30 22860 72000 before you go.
• Allow less than an hour for the visit.
• The museum is about a 5-minute walk from the Oia bus terminal and parking area, and buses from Fira run roughly every hour.
• Go in daylight, well before the evening sunset crowds fill Oia’s lanes.