The Museum of Ancient Greek Technology

We first came to Greece in 2012, and as most of what we came to see dated to the 5th century BC or earlier, it hasn’t really mattered what order we did anything as for the most part, it doesn’t change. This isn’t true for everything, of course.  The second trip we went back to the National Museum and they had an entire exhibit on the Antikythera Mechanism. Part of the exhibit included modern recreations of the device (including a wristwatch version by Hublot), and I commented to Lauren that I’d like one someday. I would’ve just gotten the Hublot, but I didn’t like the color scheme and it was $272,000. 

Years later she discovered the Museum of Ancient Greek Technology. This is the life’s work of Konstantinos Kotsanas, who trained as a Greek engineer but whose real passion is ancient Greek technology. While I wasn’t convinced that each and every example in the museum was just as the ancient Greeks built it - ancient descriptions aren't always clear - it’s without a doubt that by bringing an engineer’s eye to ancient artifacts and texts he has shed some light onto topics rarely discussed elsewhere. The museum in Athens is right off of Syntagma Square, and is a can’t-miss for any technology-oriented visitor to Athens. Plus, they sell a mechanically-identical version of the Antikythera device (see large version below)! 

They also have a working version of the 'hydralus' we saw in 2017 in Dion. This one is without a doubt real, as the pictures from Dion make clear. Here's the rebuilt version with music!

A reconstructed 'hydralus' in action

The only unfortunate part of this was that at the museum this recording is playing on a continuous loop that could be heard throughout the place. While we survived, we figured that the docents must be going slowly insane...