Archives of the Greek Regeneration

The Archives of the Greek Regeneration, one of the most emblematic archive collections of the Library of the Greek Parliament and basic reference for the study of the Greek Revolution, provided the main source of documentary material for the Exhibition «Beholding Liberty».

This impressive textual body of the 38 codices and 10.000 not bound documents, dated from the onset of the Struggle for Independence to the election of the first «king of Greece» Otto (1821-1832), offers to the visitors, men and women, the unique opportunity to see with their own eyes the dialectic relation between the public and the private, the collective and the individual, the big history and the little stories of the Revolution. In these historical documents it is recorded with vividness the moving effort of the revolted nation of the Greeks to step out of the regime of slavery and hetero-determination into the condition of citizenship – a course not at all self-evident, straight or bloodless.

The Exhibition includes a total of 69 documents from the Greek Regeneration Archives, of varied thematic entities, which converse with the wall paintings of the Frieze in the Hall of the Trophies and the Medallions of the fighters in the Hall of the Adjutants.

Simultaneously, 13 documents represent the smaller, but unique, «family» archives of the Library of the Hellenic Parliament, the archives of Ioannis Papadiamantopoulos and Panagiotis & Anagnostis Kopanistas, as well as the archive of the member of the Society of Friends Georgios Lassanis, which shed light on unknown to the wide public aspects of the Struggle.