Museum – Residence of Eleftherios Venizelos

The paternal house of Eleftherios Venizelos in Chalepa Chania was the home of his life for more than thirty years, from 1880 -when his father, Kyriakos, built the house- until 1910 and occasionally from 1927 to 1935.

The residence took its present form in 1927, when Eleftherios Venizelos returned to Chania and undertook its renovation. The renovation study was assigned to the architect Stavridis, and Venizelos personally supervised the works. The house bears the personal stamp of the great statesman, since all the spaces have preserved to this day their original form, the one they had the time that Venizelos lived in the house. It is therefore his personal “ideal” space.

In 2002 the Ministry of Finance bought the residence and ceded it to the National Research Foundation “Eleftherios K. Venizelos”, in order to become a museum and the Foundation’s headquarters. In May 2012, through the NSRF and the Ministry of Tourism, the Greek National Tourism Organization undertook the task of the museological conversion of the house into a modern museum.

The Museum – Residence of Eleftherios Venizelos consists of 3 floors and has a total of 18 visitable rooms – stations in its route, which all include authentic museum material. The ground floor and part of the first floor is exactly as delivered to the Foundation and much like when he was living in it himself. Subsequently, five rooms are presenting the action of Venizelos divided into the following topics: “The Rebel”, “The Politician,” “The Diplomat”, “The Man,” and “The Myth” completed with visual material and original museum objects from the Collection of the Foundation.

Finally, two “rooms” present the murder attempts against Venizelos, respectively in 1920 and 1933 with original documents of the era and visual material. Furthermore, in the attic of the residence the visitor is guided through an interactive – educational exhibition, donated by Stavros Niarchos Foundation.