Onassis Library Collections

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 English author and traveler Elisabeth Lady Craven suggests the public baths as the finest entertainment available to women in Athens of 1789. The Irish painter and author Edward Dodwell portrays the dance of the Dervishes in the Tower of the Winds, in 1819. The Englishman Christopher Wordsworth describes the caves of the Acropolis and the ruins of the church of St. Dionysios in his "Athens and Attica" (1836). The French diplomat Henri Belle describes the Kalamata bazaar of 1870, saying one could find "fabrics from Manchester" there. Rare iconographic details and lesser-known aspects of public life are made accessible through the Onassis Library's Travel Accounts Collection, which consists of some 3,000 titles by Western European travelers who describe the lands of the Mediterranean and South-Eastern Europe between the 16th and 20th centuries. Although they are based on observation, the publications are a valuable source of information on popular culture, geography, the economy, religion and other aspects of daily life.

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 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.

The Onassis Archive, with more than 1,000,000 items, is the result of a research project that the Onassis Foundation commissioned to the Center of Maritime History of the Institute for Mediterranean Studies/Foundation of Research and Technology― Hellas (2017–2021). It covers the entire period of Aristotle Onassis' entrepreneurial activity from 1924 to 1975, as well as the Foundation's operations from 1975 to 2009. The Onassis Archive also produced the flagship publication on the business ventures of Aristotle Onassis, "Onassis Business History, 1924–1975".

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