The Archaeological Museum of Thessaloniki, which has been closed for renovation for the past three years, opens its doors to the public today with an exhibition of some 2,000 artifacts that paint a detailed picture of private and public life in the region of Macedonia from the prehistoric era to the reign of Constantine the Great in AD 4.

The oldest exhibits include the skull of an anthropoid, Uranopithicus macedonicus, believed to be 9.5 million years old, and the “Petralona Skull,” a hominoid fossil discovered in a cave near Thessaloniki, which is at least 70,000 years old.

One of the most striking newer exhibits shows a girl’s plait of hair along with her purple and gold-trimmed funerary garments in a lead coffin encased within a marble sarcophagus dating to AD 4. The museum will be inaugurated by Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis in September.