Volos already has a museum of its own history

04 January 2015 / 22:01:33 GRReporter

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photos: www.naftemporiki.gr

A few days ago, the Museum of Volos at 17 Ferron St. opened its doors to the public. The unique contemporary building presents an exhibition entitled ‘Volos-Nea Ionia: so close and so far away’.

The building was designed by Theophilos Vasiliadis. It has 3 levels, with a total exhibition area of 765 square meters. Its premises are showing about 120 exhibits as well as 900 minutes of video and audio recordings, representing the modern history of Volos.

The exhibition is designed to commemorate 90 years since the creation of the refugee settlement Nea Ionia on 28 December 1924. It focuses on the lives of various people who met and lived together. The exhibition occupies the first two storeys. It starts with the urban scenes that the Greek refugees from Ionia in Asia Minor found when they came to Volos in 1922, and then it goes on to show the urban spaces they created following years of work in their new homeland.

The exhibition is split into several thematic sections. The Work Section presents peoples’ attempts to create through their work rather than just make a living. The Home Section explorers the private living spaces of locals as well as the quarters where older inhabitants coexisted with newcomers from Asia Minor. The Clothing Section provides clues into the social, economic and professional diversity of people in Volos.

The life of the city is the lives of its citizens. The People Section presents the life stories of Volos and Nea Ionia citizens, which they shared with the museum and became the focus of the exhibition. The Entertainment Section gives a different perspective to the life of the city and its inhabitants. The section on football gives a glimpse into the traditional rivalry between the two big Volos sides, Niki and Olympiacos, representing, respectively, the refugees from Smyrna and the locals.

If during the first decades of common life the differences between refugees and locals, or ‘under the river’ and ‘above the river’, took the upper hand, in the course of the years these stereotypes softened and melted away. The crisis spells the town went through definitely contributed to the process: e.g. the common destiny of the citizens during the German-Italian occupation (1941-1944), the earthquakes and the floods in 1955-57 as well as during the industrialisation in the mid-1980s. The social and economic upheavals of the last decades of the 20th century were also formative for the life of the city.

The museum’s ground floor offers an exhibition featuring the Matsangou print house through posters, cigarette packet models, cigarette paper designs, etc. of the Matsangou brothers’ tobacco factory. This is a rare collection with exhibits, which have not been on public display so far. It is also the first collection purchased for the museum by the Municipal History Centre.