The capital’s National Archaeological Museum will showcase in February hundreds of unseen artifacts in a section of its first floor that has been closed to visitors for a decade, the museum’s director, Nikos Kaltsas, revealed yesterday.

The new exhibition will feature about 800 pieces, chiefly from the Hellenistic period, including funerary urns, a cooling device – used in antiquity to chill wine – as well as spectacular funerary murals by the 4th-century Athenian painter Lydos.

“The aim is to present every kind of ancient artifact that exists in the museum but has not yet been displayed due to lack of space,” Kaltsas told Kathimerini. Why were the exhibits not displayed sooner? “It was not expedient to scatter the pieces over various collections,” Kaltsas said. The museum has undergone extensive renovation over the past few years.