The National Archive of Monuments

In 2021, the “Archaeological Cadastre” project was awarded in the “Education and Culture” category of the 2022-2021 Digital Governance Awards.

The Archaeological Cadastre’s OPS carries out the archaeological, administrative, and geospatial recording and documentation of immovable monuments, archaeological sites, historical sites, and their protection zones. The aim of the project is the complete supervision, protection, and management of monuments and the cultural environment by all the services involved. The corresponding web portal allows interested citizens, professionals, and public bodies to learn about the country’s rich heritage, as well as any restrictions and limitations that apply under current legislation in areas or properties of interest to them.

Today, the Archaeological Cadastre Web Portal contains descriptive and geospatial data for more than 17,000 Immovable Monuments, 3,520 Archaeological Sites and Historical Places, 844 Protection Zones, and 220 Museums.

OPS User Guide (in greek)

Web Portal User Guide (in greek)

The Integrated Information System (IIS) of Digital Collections, approximately 710,000 movable monuments from museums and archaeological warehouses of the Regional and Special Regional Services of the General Directorate of Antiquities and Cultural Heritage have been recorded so far. Similarly, the Web Portal provides access to approximately 68,000 objects from prehistoric times to modern times, with multiple search, browsing, and personalized organization options.

The Treasure of Terminology of the IIS of the National Monuments Archive were developed by a large team of experts as part of the project “Enrichment of the Digital Collections of the Ministry of Culture and Sports’ Movable Monuments and Development of a New Information System for the National Monuments Archive,” in accordance with the provisions of Article 20(3)(aa) of the Organization of the Ministry of Culture and Sports (Presidential Decree 4/Government Gazette 7/A/22-01-2018), for the codification of scientific terminology. These are structured, relational, multi-level thesauri of terms with tree-like development and/or value lists, covering every field of systematisation of information relating to movable monuments, from the distant past to the present day. Thesauri have been developed based on international standards and are fully operational for general categories of monuments such as type, materials, decoration, use, creator, as well as for specific categories such as inscriptions, coins, printed matter, and manuscripts. All thesauri, which have also been translated into English, are dynamic collections, constantly enriched by the users of the IIS themselves with suggestions to the system administrators. It is, therefore, a unique, internationally original, constantly enriched tool, which, however, is currently used and enriched exclusively by the scientific staff of the Ministry’s services.

Training sessions for interested parties are systematically organized by the Directorate’s executives to ensure proper use of the system.

The archival material stored in the Archive consists of approximately 12,000 archival files, mainly from the administrative correspondence of the Central Services. Most of it concerns cases relating to the discovery, preservation, and protection of movable monuments, studies on the promotion of archaeological sites and monuments, while equally important are the documents related to the fight against antiquities trafficking.