Museum of Cycladic Art

The Cycladic figurines were carved between roughly 3200 and 2000 BC on the islands of the central Aegean: flat, folded-arm figures of white marble, faces reduced to a single ridge of nose, some barely a hand's length and a few nearly life-size. Rediscovered in the nineteenth century, they startled modern sculptors with their abstraction, and Picasso, Brancusi and Modigliani all borrowed from them. This museum, founded by the collectors Nicholas and Dolly Goulandris, holds the most important private collection of them anywhere, displayed on dark backgrounds in a purpose-built galley on Neofytou Douka Street. Upper floors add ancient Greek and Cypriot art, and a glass corridor links the museum to the Stathatos Mansion, a restored nineteenth-century house used for temporary exhibitions.

What you actually see

• The Cycladic gallery - folded-arm figurines from the third millennium BC.
• The daily life floor - Greek antiquities arranged by how they were used.
• The Cypriot collection - one of the largest outside Cyprus.
• The Stathatos Mansion - a restored neoclassical house joined to the museum.

When to go

Year-round; it is indoors and air-conditioned, which makes it a good midsummer afternoon or a rainy day. Check the temporary exhibition programme, which is often strong.

Honest expectations

The collection is small compared with the National Archaeological Museum, and the figurines are subtle, repetitive objects that reward slow looking rather than spectacle. Photography rules vary by gallery.

Nearby

Kolonaki's cafes are on the doorstep, the Byzantine and Christian Museum is a short walk south, and the National Garden lies west.