The JMG Collections

Include more than 10,000 original artifacts, which document the material evidence of 2,300 years of Jewish history and culture in Greece.

The JMG Collections

Include more than 10,000 original artifacts, which document the material evidence of 2,300 years of Jewish history and culture in Greece.

The JMG collections include more than 10,000 original artefacts, which document the material evidences of 2,300 years of Jewish history and culture in Greece. The core collection, besides a few objects that were gathered after WWII, includes personal artefacts, jewellery, domestic items, synagogual objects and documents, which belonged to the Jews of Eastern Macedonia and Thrace. In the following years, the core material kept multiplying, mainly through the donations of individuals and communities, initially from Thessaly, Rhodes and Ioannina. During 1977-1982 a significant number of Ottoman ritual textiles were assembled and soon became one of the Museum’s main thematic cores. In 1984, the interior of the Patras Synagogue along with its textiles and ritual objects were bequeathed to the Museum, after the local community had been dissolved. Gradually, the Museum acquired a number of archives from individuals and organisations; these were organized and are now part of the Historical Collection. These unique collections document more than two thousand years of Jewish life in Greece, with the oldest artefacts in the Museum’s collection dating back to the 3rd century BCE.


The Museum’s collections are organized in five thematic categories and sub-categories. The large collection of Judaica consists of synagogual and ritual objects as well as objects for domestic worship. The subcategory of rare and important manuscripts particularly the circumcision certificates (Alephioth) and the marriage contracts (Ketubboth) are worth mentioning here. The Ethnographic and Folklore Collection is particularly important and interesting, since it gathers Romaniote and Sephardic traditional costumes from the late 18th to the early 20th century, as well as jewellery, shoes, embroideries, household vessels, textiles, military uniforms, urban, religious, bridal and circumcision outfits. The Historical Collection comprises of rare books, manuscripts, documents, tombstones and dedicatory plaques, photographs, coins, medals, inscriptions, newspapers and journals that trace the long presence of Jews in Greece. The World War II and Holocaust Collection contains rare historical documents, archival material, testimonies, newspapers, journals, personal items from the period of the Occupation and the Holocaust.


Prints, engravings, paintings, oil paintings, drawings and sculptures belong to the last major thematic category namely the Contemporary Art Collection. The collection includes works of art made by Greek Jewish artists, but not exclusively, and it was created in order to highlight and disseminate the contemporary artistic and cultural creative work of the Greek Jews.


The digitization of a large part of the Museum’s collections was achieved thanks to the JMG participation in the European programme Judaica-Europeana (www.judaica-europeana.eu) as a consortium partner. Judaica-Europeana (2010-2012) is an innovative digital project co-funded by the European Commission under the eContentplus programme, whose aim is to offer a multilingual digital access to the collections of the Jewish culture, through Europeana’s digital library (www.europeana.eu).