In a place that is rightly dubbed the City of Arts and Letters, the Historical and Folk Art Museum of Rethymnon, now firmly established in historical fabric, is an important space. Within its walls the beacon of the historical and folklore tradition of Rethymnon is passed on to future generations.
The Museum
A visit to the Historical and Folk Art Museum of Rethymnon is not a regression to romanticism. This is a place for reflection, in which visitors come into contact with the history and tradition of a singular people, agent of a splendid culture.
It was this feeling and the love I inherited from my father, George Voyatzakis, for our home town of Rethymnon, that led me to found in 1974, together with the late Christophoros Stavroulakis, the Historical and Folk Art Museum of Rethymnon. This is a Private Non-Profit Foundation, that aims to study and collect historical and folklore material from Crete, particularly from the Prefecture of Rethymnon, and to stimulate interest in the study and promotion of the Cretan tradition.
Today’s Crete is linked closely with its rich historical and cultural past. The island’s natural environment, with its beauty and diversity, is the setting of its history and culture.
The Museum is housed in its own Venetian building, a fine example of seventeenth-century urban architecture from the period of Venetian rule in Crete. These premises are the ideal space for the Museum’s operation. It took twenty years of preparation, for the restoration of the listed building, the collection and classification of the material, the arrangement of the exhibition spaces and the presentation of the exhibits in units, until the year 1996, when the Museum opened its doors to the public.
The items of Cretan history and folk culture on display that make up its Collection come mainly from gifts and number over 18,000 objects. The visitor is given the opportunity to go beyond their material substance and to enter into the spirit of the exhibits, the period they refer to and its people.
Mirrored in the artworks and artifacts are the myths, the discourse, the values and the spiritual wealth of the Cretan people, which shaped their cultural identity with imagination and sensitivity.
The island’s fortunes under foreign conquerors – Arabs, Venetians, Ottoman Turks, Germans – and the continuous struggles of the Cretan people for their freedom and Union with Greece, are presented in the Gallery of the Historical Collection, through coins, weapons, flags, maps, photographs and biographies of freedom-fighters.
Contrary to the Ottoman-held regions of Greece, Crete under the Venetians had the possibility of communicating and communing with the European Renais- sance, and exploited this to the utmost. Thus, the Cretan Renaissance is a special chapter in which there was a burgeoning of narrative poetry (Erotokritos), theatre (Erofili), painting, icon-painting and sculpture.
Displayed in the galleries of the Folklore Collections are objects associated with traditional handicrafts, textiles and handlooms, embroideries, lace, pottery, baskets, metal objects, farmers tools and traditional craftsmen.
Through research projects, temporary exhibitions, colloquia, educational pro- grammes and publications, the Museum endeavours to fulfil the aims for which it was founded.
The Museum owes the Venetian mansion and its most important exhibits to donors. The work and the contribution of all those who have helped with devotion and passion in its creation have today been justified.
We continue to enrich our collections, and seek to expand the museum, which is already suffocating from lack of exhibition and storage spaces.
We wish to thank the Greek State for its contribution to the creation of the Museum and hope for its further support. Our aims are for the Historical and Folk Art Museum of Rethymnon to become a centre of excellence, which will collaborate with other museums, with the University of Crete and other cultural institutions, in order to create a pan-Cretan network that will promote the importance of Crete in global civilization and will define clearly its identity in the world.
Fali G. Voyatzaki
Co-founder and President of the Board
