Athens Museums / Best museums in Athens / Herakleidon Museum
A working model of the Antikythera Mechanism and Heron's automata in Thissio. How long it takes and how to book.
Tickets and tours
Entry to the single exhibition of working ancient-technology models, with the 3:1 Antikythera Mechanism as the centrepiece. Valid for one day, and it cancels free.
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All experiences →Herakleidon Museum Athens tickets cost €10 on GetYourGuide with a fixed date and free cancellation up to 24 hours before, and the reason to go at all is what is inside: a working model of the Antikythera Mechanism at three times its original size, a wine-pouring automaton built to the descriptions of Philo and Heron, and a pair of temple doors that open on their own when the altar in front of them is heated. For a family that has done the Acropolis and wants something the children can watch move, this small private museum in Thissio is a good answer. For a visitor on a two-day trip with the National Archaeological Museum already on the list, it is an optional hour, not a fixture.
This page sets out what the online ticket includes and what it does not, why a guided tour only exists for pre-booked groups, the verified opening hours and the winter days the museum is shut, how to find the door from Thissio metro using the museum's own directions, the four exhibits the museum itself names as the core of its collection, and how to fit the visit between the Ancient Agora and the Acropolis. The short version: book the €10 ticket for the morning you plan to spend in Thissio, use the free audio guide on your phone, and allow about an hour.
Plain ticket, because for an individual visitor there is no other kind. Neither GetYourGuide nor Headout sells a guided tour of the Herakleidon Museum, and the museum itself offers guided tours only by pre-arrangement: it asks groups to contact it at least a week ahead, prices by group size for larger groups (with no reduced tickets valid on that price), and runs educational programmes in English, booked at least five days in advance by phone. If you are travelling as a school party or a large family group, that is worth knowing. If you are two adults and two children, it is not for you.
What replaces the guide is the museum's free audio guide, which you open by scanning a QR code on your phone, with no app to download, and the free WiFi that goes with it. The exhibits are working models with the mechanism on show, and the audio guide explains what each one does, so the self-guided visit is the intended one rather than a second-best.
The GetYourGuide entry ticket for the Herakleidon Museum Athens, then, is the product to compare with the desk. It includes entry to the museum, is valid for one day and self-paced, and can be cancelled up to 24 hours before for a full refund. GetYourGuide also offers its reserve-now-pay-later option on it. At the time of writing it carried a 4.3 rating from 23 reviews, a snapshot that will change. The activity provider on the listing is the museum's own non-profit company, so this is the real museum and not a mix-up with the separate Kotsanas Museum of Ancient Greek Technology, a different private museum with a similar name. Headout has no standalone ticket for the Herakleidon Museum as of September 2026. It reaches the museum only through the Turbopass city card described further down. The museum also sells its own tickets online through the Book Now link on its site.
Herakleidon Museum Athens prices are a snapshot from September 2026. The partner page shows the live figure before you pay, and the on-site prices are the ones the museum publishes on its plan-a-visit page.
| Ticket | Price | Includes | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Entry ticket (GetYourGuide) | from about €10 | Museum entry, valid one day, self-paced. Free cancellation up to 24 hours before, reserve now and pay later | Book |
The arithmetic is simple because there is nothing to compare. Booking is about the terms: a date you have committed to, a full refund if you cancel a day ahead, and one less thing to sort out on the morning. If your party includes children aged 6 to 18, a student or a pensioner, the reduced rate and the free entry for under-sixes are verified against ID on arrival. Check whether the partner listing offers the reduced rate before you book, or simply pay for those tickets on arrival.
There are no free days. The Herakleidon Museum is a private initiative that has operated as a non-profit civil company since 2008, so the Ministry of Culture free-days list that applies to the Acropolis and the state museums, including the free winter Sundays, does not apply here, and the museum publishes no free-day list of its own. The only price breaks are the reduced and free categories above and the two city passes, which are worth buying only if you already want the Acropolis and the other big entries they bundle.
The Herakleidon Museum Athens timetable has a seasonal split, and it is the detail most likely to catch a winter visitor out. From April to October the museum is open every day, Monday to Sunday, from 10:00 to 18:00. From November to March it opens Wednesday to Sunday only, 10:00 to 18:00, and is closed on Monday and Tuesday. Last admission is 17:30 in both seasons, and the museum publishes no late-opening evening.
The annual closures the museum lists are 1 January, Greek Orthodox Easter, 15 August and 25 and 26 December. The museum's own page carries a date label for the Easter closure that does not match the 2026 calendar, so treat the Easter closure as certain and the exact days as something to confirm by phone if you are in Athens over the Orthodox Easter weekend.
On timing within the day, there is less to say than for the Acropolis, and that is a point in the museum's favour. It is one exhibition in one restored neoclassical building and the ticket is not tied to a time slot, so the booking is about holding the date rather than the hour. The practical constraints are the ones above: be through the door by 17:30, and in winter do not plan it for a Monday or Tuesday. Because the museum opens at 10:00, an easy pattern is to start here and walk on to the Ancient Agora, or to come here after a morning on the Acropolis, when the models are a different kind of looking after a few hours of stone.
How long to allow: the museum publishes no figure, and this is our own estimate rather than a museum statement. With one exhibition of working models and an audio guide worth listening to, about an hour is realistic, and a family that wants to watch the automaton serve wine and the temple doors open more than once should allow up to an hour and a half. It is not a half-day museum, and it should not be planned as one.
The Herakleidon Museum Athens address is 16 Herakleidon Street, postcode 118 51, in Thissio, on a pedestrian street with no parking. The nearest metro is Thissio on Line 1, the green line. The museum's own directions from the station are the ones to follow: at street level turn right onto the pedestrian street Apostolou Pavlou, walking towards the Acropolis, then turn right onto Herakleidon Street at the Londos restaurant-cafe, and the museum is number 16, just past the cafes on the right. Coming down from the Acropolis on foot, the museum's version is the mirror image: follow Apostolou Pavlou downhill towards Thissio and turn left onto Herakleidon Street at the same Londos cafe. The museum gives no walking-time figure for that route.
The neighbours are close, which is the museum's strongest argument. The Ancient Agora is about 4 minutes on foot, the Acropolis about 9, the Acropolis Museum about 13 and the Temple of Olympian Zeus about 17, all on the same side of the old town, so the museum sits naturally inside a Thissio and Agora morning rather than needing a trip of its own. From Syntagma Square our own estimate is 15 to 20 minutes on foot. The metro is the simpler answer.
One thing to know before you set out: the museum's own accessibility notice says, in capitals, that the building is not friendly for people with mobility restrictions. It is a restored neoclassical house rather than a purpose-built gallery, and the museum does not soften that warning anywhere on its site. If someone in your party uses a wheelchair or finds stairs difficult, phone the museum first rather than assuming there is a lift.
Since 2018 the Herakleidon Museum Athens has presented a single permanent exhibition and collection, EUREKA: Science, Art and Technology of the Ancient Greeks, created with the Association for the Study of Ancient Greek and Byzantine Technology. The museum's first decade, from 2004, was given to art exhibitions, including Escher, Vasarely, Munch and Degas. Those are past exhibitions and none of that work is on display now, so do not go expecting prints. The four exhibits below are the ones the museum itself puts at the front of its collection page.
One thing to understand about the collection: these are didactic models, built by researchers to show how the ancient machines worked, not excavated antiquities. That is the museum's purpose and its strength. If what you want is the original objects, the state museums are where they are. If what you want is to see the machines move, this is the place in Athens that shows you.
Start with the hard limit, because it is the museum's own: the building is not friendly for people with mobility restrictions, and it stands on a pedestrian street with no parking. Beyond that the museum publishes surprisingly little in the way of house rules. There is no published bag, photography, stroller or cloakroom policy anywhere, and no mention of a cafe or shop, so ask on arrival rather than relying on what other museums allow, and plan on refreshments in the neighbourhood rather than inside.
Bring a charged phone. The audio guide is free, opens from a QR code without an app, and runs on the museum's free WiFi, so it costs you nothing but battery. It is the difference between looking at a model of the Antikythera Mechanism and understanding what its dials were for, and it is the closest thing to a guide an individual visitor gets.
Check the calendar. In winter the museum is closed on Monday and Tuesday, and all year it is closed on 1 January, Greek Orthodox Easter, 15 August and 25 and 26 December. Last admission is 17:30, which comes round quickly after a long lunch. The GetYourGuide ticket is valid for a day rather than a time slot, so if the Acropolis runs long you are not chasing a booking, and if the day falls apart you can cancel up to 24 hours before for a full refund.
A simple plan for a family: take Line 1 to Thissio for the 10:00 opening, follow the museum's directions along Apostolou Pavlou, spend an hour with the automaton and the temple doors, then walk the 4 minutes to the Ancient Agora while it is still cool, and go up to the Acropolis or on to the Acropolis Museum after lunch. If you are visiting between November and March, put the Herakleidon Museum Athens on a Wednesday to Sunday and give the Monday to a state museum instead.
The Herakleidon Museum Athens is included in two passes. The GetYourGuide Athens City Pass from about €79, a Turbopass product valid for 1 to 5 days, bundles it with Acropolis timed entry, the Acropolis Museum, the Kotsanas museums, the Museum of Illusions, the Athens War Museum and more, plus 48 hours of hop-on hop-off bus and an optional public transport add-on, with free cancellation up to 24 hours before and a 4.0 rating from around 930 reviews at the time of writing. The Headout Turbopass Athens City Card from about €78.90 covers 1 to 6 days with the Acropolis, the Museum of Illusions, the War Museum, this museum and the public transport network, though it carried only a 2.8 rating from 13 reviews when we checked. Our Athens City Pass page works through whether the Acropolis and the big museums make either pass pay off. If they do, the Herakleidon Museum is a useful extra for the children, and if they do not, buy the €10 ticket and leave it at that.
The natural pairing is the Ancient Agora, 4 minutes on foot and the nearest of the sites. Our Ancient Agora tickets page covers its hours and tickets. The Acropolis is about 9 minutes up Apostolou Pavlou by the museum's own route, which makes the two an obvious morning: mechanism first, hill second, or the other way round if you want the hill before the heat.
For the rest of your Athens, two pages are worth a look. Our National Archaeological Museum tickets page covers the big state collection most itineraries already include and is the sensible counterpart to a museum of models: originals there, working reconstructions here. And our Best museums in Athens guide ranks the city's collections and suggests which ones fit together in a day. The Herakleidon Museum Athens earns its place on that list for a specific reader: the family, or the engineer, who has looked at enough marble and wants to see something from the ancient world turn, pour and open. For that reader it is an hour well spent at a price that asks nothing of the budget, four minutes from the Agora and a Line 1 ride from the centre.
Before you book
What people ask before they book.
From about €10 through a partner, with a fixed date and free cancellation up to 24 hours before. A reduced rate applies to ages 6 to 18, students, teachers and pensioners, with the relevant ID. It is a private non-profit museum, so the state free-day list does not apply.
Working models of ancient Greek technology, built at full or enlarged scale. The centrepiece is a 3:1 operational model of the Antikythera Mechanism, alongside Philo's automatic wine-serving servant, Heron's automated temple gates built from the Pneumatika, and a section of siege machines including onagers and catapults.
No, and the two complement each other. The National Archaeological Museum has the original corroded fragments in Room 38. The Herakleidon has a large working model you can see turning, which is what makes the original readable. Seeing both in one trip is the point.
10:00 to 18:00 with last admission at 17:30. From April to October it opens every day. From November to March it opens Wednesday to Sunday and closes on Mondays and Tuesdays. It also closes on 1 January, Greek Orthodox Easter, 15 August, and 25 and 26 December.
About an hour to an hour and a half. It is a single focused exhibition rather than a large collection, and the models reward standing and watching rather than walking past, so it works well as a second stop after something larger.
At 16 Herakleidon Street in Thissio, by Thissio station on Line 1. That puts it a few minutes from the Ancient Agora's current Thiseio Square entrance, so the two make a natural morning together.
The National Archaeological Museum has the corroded original. Thissio has the working model that makes it readable.