:: Ecclesiastical Museum

In 1996, the Diocese of Edessa, Pella, and Almopia founded an ecclesiastical museum in the centre of Edessa, on the outskirts of the traditional Varossi district and adjacent to Kokkinos Vrahos. It occupies the second floor of a three-storey building owned by the diocese.

The most important exhibits are ecclesiastical, but there are also mementoes of the Greeks’ liberation struggles, of resistance to external foes, and of the fostering of the Christian faith.

Exhibits include altar doors from old churches in the prefecture of Pella, post-Byzantine icons of the Panayia, the crucified Christ, and saints, oil lamps and candelabra, chalices, ecclesiastical vessels, icons from chancel screens, epitaphii (most notable among which is the Russian epitaphios from the church of Aridaia, which dates from the time of the tsars), the vestments of the last three metropolitans of Edessa, Pella, and Almopia, rare ecclesiastical books, and numerous photographs of the various activities carried out within the diocese.

There are also portraits and uniforms of men who took part in the Macedonian Struggle, traditional women’s costumes, an Italian weapon that is a trophy of the Greek-Italian war of 1940, and the front page of the Makedonia newspaper describing the victories of the Greek army on the Albanian front.