The Pancyprian gymnasium museum

This time, during imap I went again to the Pancyprian gymnasium museum. And surprise, it was open,hihi. For me, it was really interesting to visit it and to feel a little bit of the history of Cyprus. Especially, by how well structured the museum is, so I basically went to a journey back in time from room to room. But let’s see first a little bit about the evolution of the museum.

Hellenic School was founded in 1812 by the Archbishop of Cyprus Kyprianos. The Pancyprian gymnasium museum was basically a evolution of the Hellenic School. The work and the efforts put by the teachers are easily seen in the various collections of this historic school. It is easy to see the diverse education that students had access to.

The Pancyprian gymnasium museum was first built in 1893. Back then, the Counselor of Greece to Cyprus, K. Panourgias donates his collection of fossils. As time passed by, the museum received more collections from donations and also many awards of students and teachers.  Around 1940, the museum became archaeological because of the amount of effort that was put.  In 1993, all the collections were reorganized and enriched.

As you enter in the museum, on the right you can see The History of School that contains some of the writings of the teachers but also portraits with teachers. In the second room, History of School, you can see portraits with teachers, but also photos from different activities with students and teachers. I saw one photo that caught my attention with the students and the teachers doing an activity in the mountains, during winter, and surprise, it was snow. The photo is from around 1930 . also, you can see the teacher’s notebooks and reports.

Moving on, to Student’s life you can see the uniforms that the students were wearing and also some equipment. Next, the museum has two rooms connected. The first one is Art collection where you can see paintings from teachers and from students. The other one is Art events where you can admire the costumes used for different events, the trumpets and other musical instruments, but also some of the student’s awards.

In the next room, School equipment I spent most of the time. I was simply fascinated by the things that I found there. Some of the tools that the teachers used are there. You can find from most of the fields, such as chemistry, physics, etc. Of course, my whole attention was on the tools used to produce electricity and on the ones related to Fluid Mechanics, such as the tool used to measure the viscosity of a fluid, or all the pumps. It has been indeed such a pleasure to go back in history to see the equipment on which the students used to practice and to learn their theoretical knowledge. Also, you can find the office of the first prime minister of education in Cyprus, that was also a student of Pancyprian Gymnasium.

The following room is National struggles, Special celebrations where you can find information about the struggles that they had during the British invasion. It was really interesting for me to find out more about it. Also, you can find out more about the special celebrations that were taken place back then.

Going to the first floor, you enter in a room that is called Archaeological collection, where you can find objects from the Hellenic and byzantine period. If you go to the next room, you find a whole collection of coins, weapons and maps.

The last room it also has an archaeological collection of objects and vases. One particular object that caught my attention was a piece of gold that was used to put on the forehead of dead people.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to take pictures, but the whole visit was a journey to the history of Cyprus and to the history of education and I strongly recommend it to anyone. You can find it here.