A meeting of sacred collections

The Museum of Byzantine Culture in Thessaloniki is currently showing "Two Collections Meet," its first exhibition of icons, liturgical items, vestments and holy relics in many years, MBC director Agathoniki Tsilipakou tells Kathimerini.

Not only are a number of the items on public display for the very first time, but they are being exhibited alongside some of the latest discoveries in research into Byzantine painting in northern Greece - especially in the areas of Thessaloniki, Mount Athos and Central and Western Macedonia.

"The intention is to show the whole that was constituted by the combinative study of objects taken from two different collections, from Thessaloniki's Municipal Art Gallery and the city's MBC. One collection completes the other, thanks to the combinative approach through which the various manifestations of Christian Orthodox art in the years...