Elytis House Museum in Plaka officially opened

The Odysseus Elytis Museum honoring the late Greek Nobel Prize-winning poet was inaugurated by Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis on Friday evening, in the presence of Culture Minister Lina Mendoni.

The Museum was inaugurated on the eve of the poet’s birthday on November 2 (1911) in Iraklio, Crete. He died in 1996, aged 84.

The event was “a historical duty of the state” and proof of the government’s priority to invest in modern Greek culture, the premier said.

Mendoni said the museum was an idea of the poet’s partner, poet Ioulita Iliopoulou, who was present.

The museum, on the corner of Dioskouron and Polygnotou streets in the Plaka district of Athens, houses Elytis’ archives and includes his desk.

The archive belongs to Iliopoulou, who said that the purpose of the center was meant to be a place where researchers, devoted readers, but also a passer-by, a person who writes poetry but is still afraid of it, and a child learning poetry may become familiar with Elytis’ world. [AMNA]