A small Museum of a great family

The Karatheodori Museum is housed in the old Primary School of Nea Vissa. Here are exhibited personal belongings and furniture of Stefanos Karatheodori who was born in 1789 in Bosnochori of Adrianople. He was the personal physician to the Sultans in Constantinople.

The museum's exhibits also include documents and objects from the Ionian University of Smyrna (Izmir) where the great mathematician of the 20th century, Konstantinos Karatheodori, was a professor.

In the family tree that unfolds on the wall of the Museum, almost all the descendants of Stefanos Karatheodori are presented. Among them are the poet Konstantinos Kavafis, the writer Penelope Delta, the academic Stefanos Geroulanos and others.

The Museum houses a collection of Kavafis’s poems. Beyond copies of ancient coins, the originals are in the Benaki Museum in Athens. These two seemingly unrelated collections are linked through the figures depicted to the persons mentioned in Kavafis’s poetry.

The museum was inaugurated in 2017 by Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew and is constantly being enriched with new items from the family.