Mastic Museum

The Chios Mastic Museum is located in Mastic villages of the south Chios, in the only place in the world where o skin and is produced by mastic resin.

The traditional mastic cultivation is still alive today - all the work of harvesting from the trunk of the mastic tree, cleaning and processing it is still done by hand - and is an important element of the local economy, the identity of the inhabitants and the history of the place.

The Mastic Museum was first opened in 2016, is housed in a building created for the purposes of the museum, on a plot granted by the Chios Mastic Producers Association and operates under his responsibility Piraeus Group Cultural Foundation (PIOP)

The impressive architecture of the Chios Mastic Museum, fully harmonized with the environment, in an area of ​​3.270 sq.m. and built on 12 acres of land of which 5 are mastic, stands proudly as a real delivery ark and the whole story of the most fragrant tears of the universe unfolds.

The Mastic Museum is located on top of a slope opposite the medieval village of Pyrgi, in an orchard of standard cultivation of mastic trees. The visitor reaches the highest point of the stadium from where he has a panoramic view of the landscape with the mastic fields and in the background the Tower without being obstructed by any building volume. The museum is gradually revealed to the visitor, as he descends the slope, through a succession of covered, closed and open spaces. The museum building consists of two parallel wings, half buried in the ground, which follow the slope of the natural ground. The entrance is from the upper wing, as the visitor sinks under the first roof, to find the ticket office, shop and refreshment room on his right and the multipurpose room on his left. The huge glass curtains always give you the opportunity to enjoy at the same time the interior exhibits, but also the unique landscape of the stone terraces on which the mastic trees are cultivated.

The permanent exhibition deals with Chios Mastic as a unique natural product. In the introduction, we learn about the spinach of the Pistacia lentiscus Chia variety and the mastic, the resin that in 2015 was recognized as a natural medicine.

In the first section we discover traditional know-how of mastic cultivation.

In the second section we observe how the mastic management historically shaped the rural and inhabited landscape of southern Chios and Mastichochoria.

In the third section we are informed about cooperative exploitation (Association of Mastic Producers of Chios) and processing of mastic in modern times, which marks an important chapter in the productive history of Chios, with the main exhibit of its old factory, in a large area, where the first chewing gum mechanisms are exhibited and put into operation

Special mention is made of uses with which mastic today travels around the world.

The museum experience is completed in outdoor exhibition, in which the public comes in contact with the plant and the natural environment in which it thrives.

The Mastic Museum of Chios became in a few years one of the most visited museums in Greece and is the pride of PIOP and the island of Chios.