Athenian Museum’s first show hall to finish construction

CAIRO – 31 July 2017: The first museum hall of the Athenian Museum in Minya construction will be completed by Mokawlon Al-Arab.

Elham Sala, head of the museums sector of the Ministry of Antiquities, said that the works involved in preparing the hall included the finishes, wall paintings, quality of floors, air conditioning openings, ceilings and lighting.

Salah added that the consultant office of museum planning project will preview the hall, give reviews and the last opinion to continue on the same approach for other museum halls.

She pointed out that work on museum has been going hard since late last year on orders of professor Khaled Al-Anany Antiquities Minister who recommends completing the projects and removing any obstacles could stop it.

Ahmed Hemida, general manager of the Athenian Museum, stated that the project of building the museum started in 2002 on three levels; the first and second ones included all constructions for the building of the museum and all attached buildings and finished in 2010, however the revolution of January 25 led to stopping the project because of the retreat of tourism and how this affected the ministry’s budget that financed the project.

Hemida mentioned that the works appealed in late 2015. The third level of the project then started, which includes the finishes, paintings, ceilings, light and insurance systems.

The Athenian Museum takes a pyramidal shape, with a space of 25 acres with 600 meters lengths on Nile cornice. There are16 halls for show, with the main hall to tell the history of Al-Minya city during different ages and the others include antiques tell history and art of Athenian age. All this will be besides a theatre, cinema, conferences hall for 800 persons, ancient library, bazaar area with 19 bazaars, 5 lakes on Nile, and a large number of cafes, a management building with a training center and other for revival heritage industries.