CAMERA MUSEUM IN MYSTRAS

Text by Nikos Aivalis, research by Elpida Zografidou, photo report by Paraskevas Aivalis, translation by Eva Trombetas

In our current journey we will visit the Museum of Cameras of Takis Aivalis, in Mystras of beautiful Laconia. We will get to know this beautiful museum, which is truly the joy of every camera friend, as there is a great collection that can immerse you in the history of photography.

Camera Museum Takis Aivalis

Following the road EO Sparta Mystras, just before entering the center of Mystras, we find the museum. Mystras is one of the most historic places in Greece with the famous castle city, in a beautiful natural environment. You can see our journey to Mystras in our article: Mystras the Byzantine State

the museum in the Guinness Book of Records

It is worth mentioning that the museum entered the Guinness record in 2001 thanks to the large collection of cameras, which is the largest collection of its kind in the world. In a very beautiful place you can admire a large number of cameras.

The museum was inaugurated in 2013 and was a dream of Takis Aivalis and Anastasia Aivalis. Takis Aivalis was born in beautiful Mystras in 1934, went to school in Sparta, studied in New York in the United States of America, served in the US Army thanks to which he found himself being in Germany. After being discharged from the army, he returned to America and studied advertising, tourism, commercial photography and fashion photography.

In 1967 Takis Aivalis returned to Greece where he opened his own photography studio, while he was the founder of the Hellenic Association of Creative Photography. Through a huge photographic career, with great collaborations, he was one of the most renowned photographers in the field.

This huge collection with about 1,000 cameras, started in 1940 when Takis Aivalis father brought him a camera from America. By the 1960s it had already reached 300 cameras, most of them from America.

One of the oldest cameras in the collection is a 1885 Kodak camera, which shows how one can see the evolution of cameras from the past to the present.

The collection includes huge names in the field of cameras such as: Kodak, Coronet, Nikon, Canon, Olympus, Polaroid as well as many more companies that have made history. The collection also includes aerial cameras from the US Army.

In the large collection there are wooden cameras, lenses, negatives, accessories, as well as books.

It is worth noting that in 2006 Takis Aivalis wrote and published the photo album "Mystras journey through time".

The museum is accessible to all camera lovers, as well as to schools, clubs and groups.

Somewhere at this point our exploration comes to an end at the Museum of Cameras of Takis Aivalis, we recommend to all travelers who may find theirselves in the area, to definitely visit the museum. It is worth knowing the history of the camera, which is an invention that changed human life, as it has the unique ability to save experiences, memories, people and landscapes in one lens, capturing it all and keeping them alive in photo albums.