Onassis Library Collections
Τhe place where Homer “meets” Voltaire and Rigas Velestinlis; and C. P. Cavafy “meets” Sappho and Jane Austen
The Onassis Library, with its six collections, more than 10,000 volumes, and rich archival material, offers a haven of rare stories, sources, books, and archives. Α journey through time and unknown aspects of Greek―but not only―history.
A seven-hundred-year old cultural heritage
The Hellenic Library accumulates books, mainly relating to the publishing and printing history of the Greeks from the first days of printing in the 15th century to the mid-20th century. The collection contains more than 4,500 titles.
From the pocket edition of 1567 with eight selected tragedies by Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides to the "Hellenic Nomarchy" of Anonymous the Greek and Rigas Velestinlis' Charta (Map of Greece), the Hellenic Library guides us through the evolution of Greek printing on a journey that starts with the first publications of Greek books in printing presses operating in over 20 cities outside the Ottoman Empire. The Hellenic Library accumulates books, mainly relating to the publishing and printing history of the Greeks from the first days of printing in the 15th century to the mid-20th century. The collection contains more than 4,500 titles, which are divided into six main sections:
Renaissance-Humanism,
with works by ancient Greek authors, lexicons, philosophical treatises and philological essays.
Neohellenic letters,
with literary works, poetry and popular writings, historical works, essays, grammars/dictionaries and school textbooks.
Liturgical books
including Gospels, Menaia, Psalters, Horologia, Pentecostaria, Euchologia.
Theological writings
on the history of the Church and of Orthodoxy by writers such as John Chrysostom, Basil the Great, Gregory Nazianzen, and Maximus the Confessor.
Neohellenic Enlightenment,
with original works about preparations for the 1821 Revolution and Greek translations of world literature (poetry and prose).
Archive material
containing letters and declarations written by heroes of the Greek revolution of 1821, proclamations of the newly-founded Greek state.
The Travel Accounts Collection contains 3,000 works by foreign travelers
Aristotle Onassis' Personal Library consists of 1,300 volumes, which adorned his private study in Monte Carlo, covering a wide range of subjects, from shipping and business to history and literature.
The Historical & Literary Archive consists of some 500 archival items (manuscripts, printed, and typewritten documents) of important personalities from the political, military, and intellectual world of Greece. It mainly covers the period from the early 19th to the last decades of the 20th century.
The Cavafy archive consists of more than 2,000 archival items that include manuscripts, photographs and personal effects of the celebrated poet
The Cavafy Archive was acquired by the Onassis Foundation at the end of 2012, thus safeguarding the archive’s continued presence in Greece and preventing a potential fragmentation. The Cavafy archive – comprising with the correlated Singopoulo archive – consists of more than 2,000 archival items that include manuscripts, photographs and personal effects of the celebrated poet. The digital reproduction of all original archival materials was completed in 2017 (a total of 11,086 images). That same year, 158 microfilms storing the 1,963 photographic documentation of the archive – undertaken by the leading Modern Greek literature scholar, G. P. Savvidis – were also digitized (a total of 4,741 images). It is now the policy of the Archive to make these digitized items openly available and accessible in their entirety, in accordance with internationally recognized standards. The complete description and documentation of the archival materials allows for optimal searching and navigation through the digital archive, and for the application of new technologies.
The Cavafy Archive, together with the Cavafy Library, as well as the collection of his personal objects and works of art with references to the poet, are permanently housed in a specially designed space in the neoclassical building at 16 Frynichou Street in Plaka.A seven-hundred-year old cultural heritage
The Onassis Library houses treasures of history and culture. Among them are:
- The first edition of the "Etymologicum Magnum" by Zacharias Kalliergis, one of the most important dictionaries of the Greek language, published in 1499 by a Greek printing house in Venice, just 44 years after the invention of printing.
- First editions of the Homeric epics, "Iliad" and "Odyssey".
- Microform editions (pocketbooks) of Aldus Manutius.
- One of the few copies of "Greek Nomarchia", the most radical book before the 1821 Greek War of Independence.
- The original French "Encyclopédie" co-edited by Dennis Diderot and Jean le Rond d'Alambert.
- The "Description of Egypt" ("Description de l’Égypte ou Recueil des observations et des recherches qui ont été faites en Égypte pendant l’expédition de l’armée française, publié par les ordres de Sa Majesté l’Empereur Napoléon le Grand") with detailed descriptions of the architecture, geography, history, art, and other aspects of Egypt.
- The renowned work "Periegesis of the Ecumene" (i.e., Description of the then-known world) by Dionysius Periegetes, a meticulous geographical treatise that was very popular in antiquity and served as an educational textbook.
- Strabo’s "Geographica", one of the first-ever world geographical