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The new temporary exhibition of the Historical Museum of Crete, is dedicated to Elli Alexiou, who devoted her life to children, to art, and to the vision of a more humane world.
A result of the steady and successful collaboration between the Society of Cretan Historical Studies and the Region of Crete, the exhibition opened on Wednesday, November 12, 2025.
The content and design of the exhibition draw on the Archive of Elli Alexiou, which has been housed at the Historical Museum of Crete since 2023, donated by her heirs.
The exhibition unfolds in three different areas of the Museum:
• On the ground floor, where the main information about her life and work is presented, along with photographs, books, manuscripts, and her personal belongings.
• In the foyer of the second floor, where paintings and furniture from her home in Athens are displayed.
• In the corridor of the permanent Nikos Kazantzakis exhibition (second floor), where documents related to the life and work of Elli’s sister, Galatea Alexiou-Kazantzakis, as well as of Galatea’s second husband, Markos Avgeris, are presented.
Elli Alexiou was born in 1894 in Heraklion, Crete, the daughter of publisher Stylianos Alexiou and Irini Zachariadi. A graduate of the Heraklion Higher Girls’ School, the Arsakeio Pedagogical Academy, the Institut Supérieur d’Études françaises, and the German School of Athens, she embarked on a pedagogical career from a young age. A founding member of the Society of Greek Writers and a member of the Communist Party of Greece from 1928, she participated in the resistance during the Occupation and, after the end of the Civil War in 1949, went into self-exile in Eastern Europe. She developed extensive literary, educational, and political activity and wrote novels, short stories, plays, children’s books, essays, and biographies. She died in 1988.
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