The building of the Archaeological Museum of Ioannina (hereinafter referred to as the Archaeological Museum of Ioannina) is located in the centre of the city of Ioannina. Built in the 1960s by Aris Konstantinidis, it was originally created to house the archaeological finds of Epirus from antiquity to post-Byzantine times, as well as the collection of works by Greek painters of the 19th and 20th centuries, donated by the “Friends of Ioannina” Association.

The renovation of the Museum was carried out from 2003 to 2008 in the framework of the project “Expansion and Modernization of the Museum of Fine Arts”, which was included in the National Strand of the Third Community Support Framework co-financed by the European Regional Development Fund.

The new permanent exhibition includes about 3.000 objects from all over Epirus. Its structure is based on three axes: a chronological, a geographical and a thematic one. The collections are arranged in seven rooms, in selected parts of the corridor and in three atriums.

They cover a long period of time: from the Lower Palaeolithic, about 250,000 years ago, to the late Roman period (3rd century AD). As the starting point of the museological flow, in the central corridor, there is a graphically rendered passage through historical time, a timeline: it depicts the main historical events that took place in Epirus (as well as the most important archaeological sites), which are juxtaposed with processes and milestones in the history of the rest of Greece.

The multifaceted exhibition aims to shed light on various aspects of the private and public life of the Epirotes in antiquity. Particular emphasis is placed on the findings from the Sanctuary of Dodoni, which are exhibited in a room dedicated exclusively to one of the most important oracles of the Greek world.

More specifically, the thematic sections are distributed in the exhibition spaces as follows:

Hall 1 : Prehistoric Epirus

Room 2 : Political and administrative organisation of Epirus

Room 3 : Ajacids, the kings of the Molossians

Room 4 : Daily life of the Epirus

Room 5 : The Archaeology of Death

Room 6 : Epirus in the Roman era

Room 7 : The sanctuary of Dodona

The renovated A.M.I. is a space open to all, in which conditions of a two-way experiential relationship between the visitor and the exhibits are developed. The objects tell their short stories, enabling the viewer to draw his or her own conclusions and create his or her own interpretation. The subtle use of the visual material (texts of sections, internal texts, captions, photographs, maps and 3D representations) contributes to the “reading” of the exhibition sets, evokes a variety of emotions and achieves direct communication with the visitor.